Re: PATCH: Update for the serial driver.

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Wed, 1 Sep 1999 14:18:09 -0700 (PDT)


On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> 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.

Has anybody bothered to check the current PCI code?

"struct pci_dev" contains the name of the PCI device ("dev->name",
surprise, surprise), and it has been copied there from __initdata
information that is discarded after bootup so that we don't waste run-time
memory on keeping all the PCI names around when they aren't needed (ie
only the devices that were found have the name).

"oldproc" is gone - because the name is there, and it's there to stay.
Exactly because there are so many cases where it's just nice to have the
information available (/proc/iomem, device driver diagnostic messages
etc).

Linus

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