Re: [BK PATCHES] add ata scsi driver

[Jens Axboe]

On Mon, May 26 2003, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jens Axboe wrote:
> >On Mon, May 26 2003, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> >>>What does the block layer need, that it doesn't have now?
> >>
> >>Exactly. I'd _love_ for people to really think about this.
> >
> >
> >In discussion with Jeff, it seems most of what he wants is already
> >there. He just doesn't know it yet :-)
> 
> 
> Another important point is time.
> 
> I continue to agree that a native block driver is the best direction.
> 
> But with 2.6.0 looming, I think it's best to evolve my ATA driver to be 
> a native block driver from a scsi one.   Not start out as a native 
> driver.  That's significant pre-2.6 churn.

I don't think that makes any sense. If you really do find missing
functionality that are candidates to be generic block property, we can
add them.

> Or, it lives out-of-tree until 2.7 and people with SATA hardware have to 
> go out-of-tree for their driver for months and months, until the working 
> driver is deemed sufficiently native :)  In the meantime, distros 
> wanting working SATA will just ship the SCSI driver as-is.  :(

I don't know why you are even worrying about this yet, time will decide
what happens. As it stands right now, I still consider your driver to be
something to play with, not something that should go into the kernel
anytime soon.

Maybe in 6 months time it has evolved to be something really great, we
add it then. Right now you are still in the design stages in some areas.

-- 
Jens Axboe