Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932220AbWBFQvN (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Feb 2006 11:51:13 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932219AbWBFQvN (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Feb 2006 11:51:13 -0500 Received: from [202.131.75.34] ([202.131.75.34]:17367 "EHLO mail.shaolinmicro.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932212AbWBFQvL (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Feb 2006 11:51:11 -0500 Message-ID: <43E77E69.8050702@shaolinmicro.com> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:50:49 +0800 From: David Chow User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041207) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Michal Schmidt Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Linux drivers management References: <43E71AD7.5070600@shaolinmicro.com> <43E71F75.7000605@stud.feec.vutbr.cz> In-Reply-To: <43E71F75.7000605@stud.feec.vutbr.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1986 Lines: 38 > Please read Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt in your copy of > Linux source. I've read the document, I strongly disagree, because it is not relavant to my question or to my original purpose of this question. Putting the driver source code in the kernel source tree has nothing to do with talking about a stable kernel API . Even you put the driver sources into the main kernel tree, it will still need a lot of work to port all drivers if the API changes. Driver sources can still host in a different project (e.g. projects in sf.net) and maintain open-source and om by the community, no difference than before For different compile time options that affect data structures, this is well known a bad idea . These types of techniques no longer allowed in Java and other OO languages . Because I can simply say the code is not portable. If really need a recompile and optimize, the distro vendor should bare this, but according to the document, "As Linux supports a larger number of different devices "out of the box" than any other operating system" , do you think Linux should one day or some day grow to 1TB source tree to include all possible drivers for all hw come from the world? I don't see there is reason why a kernel or OS need to include all the drivers for all the hardware. I don't think there is any OS vendors on the market to capable to distribute all drivers integrity, then the choice is to make a disabled Linux OS because of an OSV who has only limited supporting resources to suppport and certify limited hardware devices. Please see my other email responded to Jes about the learning curve and documentation issues of a Linux driver developer to pick up Linux skills. regards, David Chow - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/