This is Erik, and I WILL look at it. Unfortunatly, the end of the semester
is rapidly approaching, and like Linus, I have to finish my thesis in the
next few weeks. I will look at your changes, and see how best to
utilize them. First though, I just need to finish my thesis, and fix the
latest kernel's strange door locking problem with the ide CD driver (which
I cannot duplicate at home). I believe that fixing this bug is more
important than adding new features right now, don't you think?
The right way to standardize features is through the generic cdrom
interface, which should soon be used by ALL the cdrom drivers. It is
already used by both scsi and ide cdrom drivers, which are by far the most
common. Hopefully, the other proprietary cdrom drivers will make the
change soon.
In the development kernels, both the ide and scsi cdrom
drivers are now fully integrated with the new and improved generic cdrom
driver. The generic cdrom driver includes some user flags for the door
locking state. Since both the ide and scsi cdrom drivers have undergone
some MAJOR changes recently, a patch against the latest development kernel
would be most useful. Additionally, I believe the functionality you are
interested in would be best added to the generic cdrom driver.
Since the ide and scsi cdrom drivers have made the transition, I expect and
HOPE that the other cdrom drivers will also switch during the 2.1.X
kernels. This will allow ALL Linux cdrom usage to occur with a single
consistant ioctl interface. To adjust the interface, you should adjust the
generic cdrom driver. You just need to make sure you coordinate your
change with all the people using the interface.
-Erik
-- Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.et.byu.edu/~andersee/ 2485 South State St. email: andersee@et.byu.edu or andersee@debian.org Springville, Ut 84663 phone: (801) 489-1231 --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--