Re: rtl8821ae.

[Linus Torvalds]

On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 11:05:42AM -0600, Larry Finger wrote:
>> A combined driver would require very many branches based on chip
>> number and would certainly execute much more slowly.
>
> I seriously doubt there are performance issues with merging the drivers.

Quite frankly, merging drivers can be a f*cking pain. I would
seriously suggest avoiding it *unless* the hardware is literally
almost identical, or the drivers have been written with multi-chip
support from the ground up by people who actually understood the
hardware.

But the reason isn't performance - it's subtle breakage. Merged
drivers have a tendency to break support for chip A when you fix
something for chip B. And the end result is a driver that nobody
understands, and nobody can sanely test.

Sometimes it's simply better to leave old drivers alone.

                  Linus
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