> (Expecting something like /dev/ttyUSB0 to point to a particular device is rather optimistic, of course, which is why you write a rule to make that /dev/avr_programmer or something.)
And then the rule format changes, or something. Point is I've never had a problem finding a device without udev; I don't generally hotplug things into my desktop. The exception would be flash drives, but the first one plugged in becomes da0, the next one becomes da1... it's never been an issue for me because my only use cases are "leave this drive plugged in all the time and mount it in fstab", in which case it has a stable device node in practice if not in theory, and "mount a friend's drive that I will most likely never connect again"... anyway. My experience is that for a system with the same set of devices plugged into it, multiple boots will reliably give each device the same /dev node on a non-udev system.
And then the rule format changes, or something. Point is I've never had a problem finding a device without udev; I don't generally hotplug things into my desktop. The exception would be flash drives, but the first one plugged in becomes da0, the next one becomes da1... it's never been an issue for me because my only use cases are "leave this drive plugged in all the time and mount it in fstab", in which case it has a stable device node in practice if not in theory, and "mount a friend's drive that I will most likely never connect again"... anyway. My experience is that for a system with the same set of devices plugged into it, multiple boots will reliably give each device the same /dev node on a non-udev system.