linux-kernel - Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space?

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Message-ID: <20120224213027.GB15735@thunk.org>
Date:	Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:30:27 -0500
From:	Ted Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
To:	Henrik Rydberg <rydberg@...omail.se>
Cc:	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Guenter Roeck <guenter.roeck@...csson.com>,
	Jidong Xiao <jidong.xiao@...il.com>,
	Kernel development list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space?

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:22:38PM +0100, Henrik Rydberg wrote:
> 
> Maintenance. Sure, as soon as an area grows too large for a single
> person, the current structure will ensure it divides so that the patch
> stream becomes manageable. We have already seen ample examples of
> that. But the overall structure of the kernel will become less and
> less manageable, and the likelihood of duplicates and maintenance
> problems will increase.

Not necessarily.  The primary area of growth has been hardware support
(i.e., drivers), and that scales quite well.

The main issue is the grown of intra-system interfaces, and you
haven't shown that this has happened in anything approaching the
levels where we need to worry.  If we add a new file system, like
btrfs, that doesn't add a whole new set of VFS interfaces, and it's
not like we need to worry about communication interfaces between btrfs
and ext4....

						- Ted
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