netdev - Re: How come realtek drivers are combined

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:18:35 +0200
From:	Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>
To:	Mario Limonciello <mario_limonciello@...l.com>
Cc:	netdev@...r.kernel.org, edward_hsu@...ltek.com.tw
Subject: Re: How come realtek drivers are combined

Mario Limonciello <mario_limonciello@...l.com> :
[...]
> Realtek provides several (separated) drivers for their different
> chipsets, r8169, r8168, r8101, etc. I see that they are regularly all
> merged into the r8169 driver in the kernel. How come it works this
> way ?

I made it this way.

> Is it just because no one ever bothered to do it differently ? 

It was suggested before but it was not strongly argumented and I have
a strong bias against it as long as it is not clearly needed.

> Obviously, they all share a very similar code base so its somewhat
> sensible to try to produce a single driver. 

It was.

I'll probably end splitting things between the old pci-only 8169 and
the newest pci-e though.

> I would think it would work a lot better for everyone if Realtek and
> the kernel maintainers that work on the Realtek driver were directly
> in sync rather than having to play tag pulling patches from each other's
> drivers.

Given that the choice of operating systems for laptops on Dell's online
shop does not include my favorite OS, "everyone" seems a bit of an
overstatement to me (sorry, could not resist :o) ).

Compare two versions of the same driver from Realtek and you should
realize that you are addressing a false problem.

-- 
Ueimor
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html