Re: Today Linus redesigns the networking driver interface (was Re: tulip driver in ...)

Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)
Mon, 21 Sep 1998 20:06:56 -0400


Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 16:19:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>

These days the _only_ difference that SA_INTERRUPT makes is that a handler
that has SA_INTERRUPT set will not enable local interrupts on the CPU it
is running. Or rather, the generic code won't enable the interrupts
automatically: the low-level drivers can still enable them if they want
to.

That's a rather arbitrary difference, and not one worth maintaining, I
think. I should just remove that test.

As the one who put in fast interrupts, specifically for the serial
driver (I wanted a 40 MHz 386 to be able to handle multiple 115kbps
serial transfers), I agree. SA_INTERRUPT served a purpose long ago, but
it's probably best that it go away now.

However, can we please *not* make this change before 2.2 goes out? Once
we start the 2.3 development effort, yes, let's nuke SA_INTERRUPT, and
fix any device drivers that still use SA_INTERRUPT. But if we nuke it
now, I'm afraid we may end up destablizing the tree somewhat.

I'm *pretty* sure the serial driver will work fine with SA_INTERRUPT
gone --- but would I bet a million dollars on that fact? Not without
doing some serious testing, which I'm afraid we might not have time to
do before 2.2 ships.

- Ted

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