linux-kernel - Re: Driver model.. expel legacy drivers?

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Date:	Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:19:15 +0100
From:	James Courtier-Dutton <James@...erbug.co.uk>
To:	Adrian Bunk <bunk@...sta.de>
CC:	John Richard Moser <nigelenki@...cast.net>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Driver model.. expel legacy drivers?

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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