Re: Pseudoterminal terminology in POSIX

["Joshua M. Clulow via Libc-alpha" <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 at 01:33, Michael Kerrisk man-pages via
austin-group-l at The Open Group <austin-group-l@opengroup.org> wrote:
> On 8/9/20 1:18 AM, Larry Dwyer via Libc-alpha wrote:
> > How about the "control" side and the "terminal" side (of the paired
> > device files)?
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. As far as I'm concerned, that would
> also be an option worth considering.

I work on the illumos project and a few of us have been having a
(not yet public) discussion about this lately as well.  I think the
best one we could think of was:

    the "control" side for the result of posix_openpt()

    the "subordinate" side for the result of ptsname() and open(),
    "/dev/pts" still makes sense, etc

    we would rename our "/dev/ptmx" device file the "manager
    driver" rather than the "master"

We would strongly consider using the same shift as other projects,
but I think only if they actually make sense; e.g., the "terminal"
and "pseudoterminal" end doesn't really stand out as completely
clear.


Cheers.

-- 
Joshua M. Clulow
http://blog.sysmgr.org