Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin

[Martin Dalecki]

Ingo Molnar wrote:

>On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, David Weinehall wrote:
>
>>On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 03:17:52PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>
>>>'old' architectures do not hinder development - they are separate, and
>>>they have to update their stuff. (and i think the m68k port is used by
>>>many other people and not CS archeologists.) Old drivers are not a true
>>>problem either - if they dont compile that's the problem of the
>>>maintainer. Occasionally old drivers get zapped (mainly when there is a
>>>new replacement driver).
>>>
>>To testify that even really old hardware is used, I recently received
>>a patch for 2.0.xx to add autodetection for wd1002s-wx2 in the
>>xd.c-driver. Not particularly recent hardware, but the person who sent
>>the patch uses it. Why deny him usage of his hardware when it doesn't
>>intrude upon the rest of the codebase?
>>
>
>exactly. Cruft hanging around does hurt in the 'generic' kernel. There is
>'leaf' code where it hurts much less. Sure, we'd like to have clean code
>everywhere, and a driver with a clean and recent codebase will get more
>attention from the architecture point of view, but to the user, an
>outdated but working driver is better than no driver at all.
>
It's an incredibble bandwidth waste for 99.99% of people downolading 
2.5.xx and it *is* making architectural
changes in the kernel harder, becouse the modularisatoin of the kernel 
isn't nearly as perfect as you try
to disguise it here. Please just have a look at the consequences of the 
kdev_t changes, which where necessary
since already about 8 years. And then my these is somehow tautological 
if it doesn't apply now, it will
apply in about 4 years. At some point in time there is the need to let 
some things go - the problem
is more fundamental.