On November 14, 2025 10:49:09 AM PST, "Maciej W. Rozycki" [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, 13 Nov 2025, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

quoted

quoted

I think this is going to be the most difficult.  I don't remember why I
rejected the old submission, but maybe it would have modified the
existing behaviour?  A new open flag "O_DO_NOT_TOUCH_ANYTHING" might be
the simplest?

Okay, to I'm going to toss out a couple suggestions for naming:

	O_(PRE|FOR|N|NO)?(INIT|CONFIG|START)(DEV|HW|IO)?
	O_(NO?RESET|PREPARE)(DEV|HW|IO)?
	O_NO?TOUCH
	O_NYET ("not yet")
	
I think my personal preference at the moment is either O_NYET or O_PRECONFIG
or O_NYET; although it is perhaps a bit more "use case centric" than "what
actual effect it has" I think it might be clearer.  A -DEV, -HW or -IO suffix
would seem to needlessly preclude it being used for future similar use cases
for files that are not device nodes.

Hmm, I'm inconvinced about any of these.

How about O_FDONLY, to reflect that you are after a file descriptor only 
with no further actions at open time while avoiding the ambiguity of names 
such as CONFIG vs NOCONFIG or speaking more broadly implying any specific 
intent of use at all such as with CONFIG/INIT/PREPARE/RESET/whatever?

I think O_FDONLY is concise, easy to spell/say/remember, and fits the 
purpose.  Your call!

 Maciej

Overlaps too much with O_PATH, and implies that communication isn't possible *after* device-dependent setup.