Re: PATCH: Update for the serial driver.
Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@pobox.com)
Wed, 01 Sep 1999 14:48:49 -0400
"Theodore Y. Ts'o" wrote:
>
> Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 16:46:56 +0200 (MEST)
> From: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl (Rogier Wolff)
>
> Theodore, May I ask for a "name" field in your PCI-table? Then we can
> say something like "Detected an xxxx card". That make supporting such
> a card a lot easier: People get reassured that their card got
> detected.
>
> The reason why I haven't done this is because I don't want to bloat the
> kernel with overly large tables; if past history is any guide, I have no
> doubt that the number of PCI serial boards will be *large*.
>
> If we are going to be doing this, we should use the same mechanism of
> mapping vendor/device id's to (string) names that is used in
> drivers/pci/oldproc.c. But some poeple have wanted to phase this out
> entirely, although I think I remember a comment from Linus that he
> thinks it might be good for that functionality to stay in the kernel.
Tables are wonderful. I use tables to abstract small differences
between chipsets served by a single driver. Take a look at what is done
in recent clgenfb drivers. Tables are compact, can be marked with
__initdata to save memory, and make extensibility very easy.
In the case above, you can create a probe table marked with __initdata,
to dump the chip names after you probe and print them out.
Jeff
--
Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out to have been a
phenomenon, not a civilization.
-- Shirley Hazzard, "Transit of Venus"
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