On Thu,  6 Dec 2012 14:55:41 -0800, Stepan Moskovchenko [off-list ref] wrote:

In some situations, userspace may want to resolve a
device by function and logical number (ie, "serial0")
rather than by the base address or full device path. Being
able to resolve a device by alias frees userspace from the
burden of otherwise having to maintain a mapping between
device addresses and their logical assignments on each
platform when multiple instances of the same hardware block
are present in the system.

Although the uevent device attribute contains devicetree
compatible information and the full device path, the uevent
does not list the alises that may have been defined for the
device.

Signed-off-by: Stepan Moskovchenko <redacted>

I've picked this up into my devicetree/next branch. It will get pushed out to linux-next after the merge window closes.

Thanks,
g.