Message-ID: <4530C7B3.6030805@superbug.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:19:15 +0100
From: James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>
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To: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
CC: John Richard Moser <nigelenki@comcast.net>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Driver model.. expel legacy drivers?
References: <4530570B.7030500@comcast.net> <20061014075625.GA30596@stusta.de>
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Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> ...
>> This brings up a few potential questions:
>>
>>   - Will this eventually be necessary to an absolute?  Will 100M
>>     tarballs and hundreds of thousands of drivers be unmanageable in a
>>     tight, ABI-unstable monolith 10 years from now?
> 
> "hundreds of thousands of drivers" won't happen during my lifetime.
> 
> If the kernel size only doubles to 100 MB that's no problem.
> 
>>   - Would it ACTUALLY be worthwhile, given such a scenario, to expel
>>     drivers out of the tree to glue on by a static, somewhat slower but
>>     workable ABI so nobody has to touch the code ever?
> 
> Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt describes why this is nonsense.
> 

stable api is even nonsense for Windows, which tries to have a stable
api for drivers. For example, manufacturers are having to write Vista
specific drivers, because their old Windows XP drivers don't work on
Vista. E.g. Creative sound cards.


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