From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752427AbXBKAqf (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:46:35 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752470AbXBKAqf (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:46:35 -0500 Received: from ogre.sisk.pl ([217.79.144.158]:35466 "EHLO ogre.sisk.pl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752427AbXBKAqe (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:46:34 -0500 From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" To: Robert Hancock Subject: Re: NAK new drivers without proper power management? Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 01:44:16 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5 Cc: nigel@nigel.suspend2.net, linux-kernel , Pavel Machek References: <45CE533C.4010108@shaw.ca> In-Reply-To: <45CE533C.4010108@shaw.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200702110144.17783.rjw@sisk.pl> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sunday, 11 February 2007 00:20, Robert Hancock wrote: > Nigel Cunningham wrote: > > If your device requires power management, and you know it requires power > > management, why not just implement power management? Doing -ENOSYS > > instead is like saying -ESPAMMEBECAUSEIMLAZY. > > > > Let me put it another way: People keep talking about Linux being ready > > for the desktop. To me at least (but I dare say for lots of other people > > too), being ready for the desktop means that things just work, without > > having to recompile kernels or bug driver authors or wait twelve > > months. > > > > And it means that doing a bare minimum isn't enough. We keep claiming > > that Open Source is better than Proprietary software. If we accept > > half-pie jobs of implementing support for anything - driver power > > management support or hibernation support or whatever - as 'good > > enough', we're undercutting that argument. Linux's power management > > support should - as far as we're able - be at least as good as that > > other operating system's and preferably way, way better. > > > > -ENOSYS is just not acceptable. > > Well, it's probably more acceptable than silently doing nothing and the > device failing or locking up the machine on resume, but I couldn't agree > more that it's not what we want to be encouraging. Perfect may be the > enemy of the good, but "works except no power management" is hardly what > I would call good these days, more like pretty sloppy.. I think there are situations in which it can be justified, like: - The driver is not entirely finished, but we want to merge it early, because of many potential users, - The driver has only a few users who aren't interested in the suspend/resume functionality, - The device is undocumented and we don't know how to make it handle the suspend/resume (we may learn that in the future or not). For this reason I 100% agree that we should _encourage_ implementing .suspend and .resume, but we should not make it an unbreakable rule cast in stone. Greetings, Rafael -- If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. - Stephen King