FORT David <epopo@onetelnet.fr> said:
> I don't think API are changing so much, and documenting the way drivers
> SHOULD interact with the kernel is a good thing. This also make things
> easier for people to write new drivers.
Reality check... the in-kernel API for drivers is _very_ different in 2.0,
2.2.x and the upcomming 2.4. Hardware changes (2.0 has no support
whatsoever for hotplugging, it is a must today (PCMCIA-CS, USB, ...), what
is in 2.2. now was backported from 2.4 in large part). PCI has been
redone. Network driver handling has been changed significantly. Memory
management (MM) is being worked over. Filesystems have a quite different
interface now (VFS).
> You'd also agree that as time will go by, we'll have more and more
> drivers, and we'll have to wait for ALL to be stable to release anything.
Why should we start doing that now? It works just fine as is: You release
the driver as a patch for testing, if it works out for enough people and is
done well enough it gets into the standard kernel, perhaps marked
"EXPERIMENTAL", "DANGEROUS" and "DON'T USE"; the adjectives are slowly
dropped as it shows its worth, and it becomes a standard part; sometimes it
will fall into disrepair during development kernel series and not even
compile; it might be removed, redone or fixed as may be when it happens.
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 23 2000 - 21:00:14 EST