Re: [PATCH] net: consolidate lock/unlock into unlock_wait

From: Joe Perches
Date: Fri Mar 18 2016 - 18:35:26 EST


On Fri, 2016-03-18 at 17:37 -0400, David Miller wrote:
> From: Nicholas Mc Guire <hofrat@xxxxxxxxx>
> > The spin_lock()/spin_unlock() is synchronizing on the adapter->work_lock
> > as the comment also suggests, which is equivalent to spin_unlock_wait()
> > but the later should be more efficient.
[]
> There really is no justification for this change.
> This is an optimization in a slow-path of the driver.
> The device is a rarely used older piece of hardware.

It really might be nice to take some of the ancient
hardware drivers in drivers/net and move them into
some separate subdirectory like:

drivers/net/ancient
or
drivers/net/antiques
or
drivers/net/archaic
etc...

so there's some clear designation that these crufty
old drivers don't need to be touched anymore except
for maybe when kernel wide changes occur.