linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] SCSI fixes for 2.6.32-rc3

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Date:	Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:06:52 +0200
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...e.de>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...e.de>,
	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-scsi <linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jing Huang <huangj@...cade.com>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] SCSI fixes for 2.6.32-rc3


* James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...e.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-10-09 at 11:15 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 8 Oct 2009, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > So would it be acceptable to merge the 50 kloc of crap _during_ the
> > > > merge window?
> > > 
> > > Yes. I actually looked at the driver (since I had pulled it - I've 
> > > unpulled it but am still mulling it over), and while I think it looked 
> > > huge and overly complex, it by no means gave me the kinds of vibes I 
> > > get from some "obviously-ported-from-windows-with-no-clue" drivers.
> > > 
> > > So at least from my quick look I didn't get the feeling that the 
> > > driver was "evil". For me, it's a timing issue.  I hate getting big 
> > > pull requests after -rc1 is out, and I really don't like the feeling 
> > > that people are just ignoring the merge window.
> > > 
> > > That said, if somebody wants to look more closely at the driver, and 
> > > then wants to convince people that it should have gone through 
> > > "staging", feel free. But that's not what I've personally been arguing 
> > > about.
> > 
> > Greg, what's your take on the quality of this new driver? Do you have 
> > some time to do a review of this with drivers/staging/ versus drivers/ 
> > glasses on? The Git URI is at:
> 
> To me, the matter of staging versus actual tree isn't a quality issue 
> (otherwise we'd be shifting ~75% of SCSI drivers to staging, depending 
> on whose view of "quality" was being used). [...]

I think you need to update your notion of what goes into 
drivers/staging/ - these days it's primarily about code/implementation 
quality (Greg please correct me if i'm wrong about that).

Driver ABIs are distinctly down the priority list.

> [...] It's an ABI issue.  If we would have to change the user visible 
> ABI while the driver was being cleaned up, I'd want it in staging to 
> warn users to expect these problems.  Although we couldn't clean up 
> everything, I did make sure this driver plugs correctly into the 
> standard linux FC ABI before putting it in the SCSI tree, so there are 
> no ABI changes anticipated even though there will likely be a lot of 
> code changes.  Therefore, the correct clean up path for this one is 
> through the SCSI tree.

What kind of significant ABI does this driver expose? If this question 
even comes up then it's using the wrong kind of ABI i think. Drivers 
should almost never expose significant new ABIs.

If it's a storage management ABI then that should have been done at a 
higher level - possibly as a system call, but at minimum as a general 
facility.

(Anyway ... this cannot be argued without knowing what specific ABI you 
mean here.)

	Ingo
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