Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1762076AbYBLQY3 (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:24:29 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756313AbYBLQYU (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:24:20 -0500 Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:56039 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754843AbYBLQYS (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:24:18 -0500 Message-ID: <47B1C829.8020800@garzik.org> Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:24:09 -0500 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20071115) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Greg KH CC: Stephen Rothwell , LKML , linux-next@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Linus Subject: multiple drivers, single device (was Re: Announce: Linux-next (Or Andrew's dream :-))) References: <20080212120208.f7168a91.sfr@canb.auug.org.au> <20080212042133.GA4625@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: <20080212042133.GA4625@kroah.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.4 (----) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 3.2.3 on srv5.dvmed.net summary: Content analysis details: (-4.4 points, 5.0 required) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1202 Lines: 27 Greg KH wrote: > [1] Hopefully the "multiple drivers for a single device" feature people > have been asking for for years will be landing soon, of course the > number of odd places in the kernel that made the assumption that we > could only have one driver per device is causing lots of fun... Color me a bit skeptical... we've always had this capability really: for multi-function devices, just register as many subsystems as you need. If your device is a network _and_ SCSI device, you can do that with today's APIs. I just went through a long thread (e1000/e1000e) explaining how much pain multiple drivers for the same PCI ID cause on the distro side of things... its a mess. In each case you must write special case code to resolve the ambiguity. You never know which is the best driver to choose, or proper module load order -- which may vary depending on machine, not just static information captured from a kernel Makefile. Jeff -- 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/