Re: [PATCH] Re: Move of input drivers, some word needed from you

[Philipp R. <pr...@pa...>]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 02:01:59PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Philipp Rumpf wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 12:02:03PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > I think what might be saving us right now is that there is only one widely-used
> > bus architecture (PCI and it's derivatives/predecessors), so no-one is going to
> > implement conflicting new features in both parts of a split driver.
> 
> And this is not going to change. Everything but PCI is dead, and there
> isn't going to be multiple different buses. Sure, we'll have some serial
> new-generation stuff, and we'll continue to have things like USB, but I'm
> not worried about having the same chip on different buses. It'
> s a thing of the past.

Possible.  It's also possible people will go back to having many protocols, if
only because it's just another few K of firmware ROM on the device side and the
fibre connection is physically identical.

> > I don't think "there aren't going to be a great many file in this directory"
> > is really a good argument against creating a directory, except for the very
> > special case that there would be no files at all in it.
> 
> I think you're wrong. 
> 
> Logical naming and hierarchy are only helpers. If they lead to people
> finding the files more quickly and understanding them better, they are
> doing their job.

> If hierarchy leads to having to look more places, think about it more, and

According to my proposal, we would end up having all network drivers in
drivers/*/net/*.

Currently we have arch/*/drivers/net/*, drivers/net/*, drivers/net/*/*, and
drivers/*/net/*.
> just more work, that hierarchy is BAD. It doesn't matter if it is logical
> or not. It sucks. It just ends up being in your way.

I agree with the general statement.  I also think it applies to the current
hierarchy more strongly than to the proposed new hierarchy.  The current
hierarchy isn't logical, but it also doesn't give you a low number of places
to look in for drivers.  My opinion about the next point should be pretty
obvious, and I do believe it is getting in the way of people actually trying
to read some drivers.

> We could create a subdirectory for each driver. In some cases we _do_
> that (tulip and ide come to mind). But in the end, it should be done only
> when it clarifies things, not just because somebody thinks it "ought" to
> be that way.

Just to avoid misunderstandments, I never proposed creating a directory for
each driver.  I agree it's a bad idea.

> And "there aren't going to be many files in this directory" is an argument
> against it. It means that the directory doesn't end up clarifying things
> very much at all.

I would say drivers/s390/net and drivers/s390/misc are good directories.
They clarify things.  Most people just couldn't care less for them, and
those people can safely ignore all of drivers/s390.  Most people don't care
for sbus, acorn, or sgi, either.  some weird embedded people don't care
about PCI.  Most people don't care about weird embedded people's devices.

	Philipp