From: John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com>
To: john@grabjohn.com, ml@basmevissen.nl
Cc: diegocg@teleline.es, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, rpjday@mindspring.com
Subject: Re: time for some drivers to be removed?
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 12:10:25 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <200307251110.h6PBAPVO000497@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk> (raw)
> > A CONFIG_KNOWN_BROKEN option is a good thing, in the case where,
> > E.G. a SCSI driver is broken, and will randomly corrupt data, but
> > otherwise compiles and appears to work.
>
> I agree on that.
>
> Maybe I should make my point more clear. What bothers me is that a lot
> of (early 2.4) kernel versions could easely be configured non-compiling.
> Not just for exotic configurations, but also when building for an
> average PC.
>
> That is very confusing (and anoying) for all kernel builders, as you can
> not always easely tell if the kernel doesn't compile because of
> misconfiguration or because of code errors.
>
> I hope that this can be avoided for 2.6.0. "Fixing" device drivers by
> calling them obsolete, is not the right way. Because drivers that are
> broken and fixed by nobody might not be obsolete.
>
> So for 2.6.0, I propose to only mark obsolete what is really obsolete.
> Maybe everything that is broken since 2.2 and nobody complained about
> it. Then, mark broken what is broken for some time and nobody is
> (currenly) willing/able to fix.
Hmmm, maybe it's just me, but I think of obsolete as meaning something
that's due to be removed whether it works or not, because it's
functionality is no longer required. I thought we had
CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL for not sufficiently tested code.
It always used to be that with no CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL tagged code
compiled in, it was very rare to get a compile failiure. You could
rely on any kernel building, as long as you didn't touch
CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL.
Unfortunately, what seems to have happened is that things that really
should be tagged with CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL, are so desired by a lot of
users that they are being moved out of the experimental phase too
soon.
John.
next reply other threads:[~2003-07-25 10:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 46+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-07-25 11:10 John Bradford [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2003-08-14 5:34 time for some drivers to be removed? John Bradford
2003-08-13 20:55 John Bradford
2003-08-13 20:50 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-08-13 20:55 ` Bill Davidsen
2003-08-05 12:42 Mikael Pettersson
2003-08-05 13:03 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-08-05 13:35 ` Mikael Pettersson
2003-08-05 13:48 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-08-05 14:01 ` Mikael Pettersson
2003-08-06 10:06 ` Claus-Justus Heine
2003-08-09 19:40 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-08-05 16:35 ` Alan Cox
2003-08-05 18:47 ` Leopold Gouverneur
2003-07-28 7:12 linux
2003-07-27 16:22 John Bradford
2003-07-24 18:29 John Bradford
2003-07-24 18:31 ` Robert P. J. Day
2003-07-24 19:31 ` Eli Carter
2003-07-25 10:48 ` Bas Mevissen
2003-07-24 14:43 John Bradford
2003-07-24 19:24 ` Brian Jackson
2003-07-24 12:20 Robert P. J. Day
2003-07-24 14:58 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-24 15:34 ` Bas Mevissen
2003-07-24 17:32 ` Diego Calleja García
2003-07-24 17:50 ` Robert P. J. Day
2003-07-24 19:16 ` Diego Calleja García
2003-07-24 19:43 ` Robert P. J. Day
2003-07-24 18:02 ` Samuel Flory
2003-07-24 19:07 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-25 10:48 ` Bas Mevissen
2003-07-27 15:31 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-07-27 15:59 ` David D. Hagood
2003-07-27 16:18 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-07-27 16:40 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-27 17:00 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-07-27 18:45 ` David D. Hagood
2003-07-27 20:40 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-27 20:56 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-07-27 20:56 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-28 2:23 ` Herbert Pötzl
2003-07-29 19:33 ` Adrian Bunk
2003-08-13 20:16 ` Bill Davidsen
2003-08-09 18:04 ` David Woodhouse
2003-08-09 19:36 ` Adrian Bunk
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