Re: [GIT PULL] Staging driver patches for 3.19-rc1

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 07:36:00PM +0100, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> 
> Am 15.12.2014 um 19:30 schrieb Greg KH:
> > On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 07:23:35PM +0100, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> >> On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 6:55 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>> The following changes since commit 009d0431c3914de64666bec0d350e54fdd59df6a:
> >>>
> >>>   Linux 3.18-rc7 (2014-11-30 16:42:27 -0800)
> >>>
> >>> are available in the git repository at:
> >>>
> >>>   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging.git/ tags/staging-3.19-rc1
> >>>
> >>> for you to fetch changes up to 17d2c6439be65777245914be354c5a97c76ad246:
> >>>
> >>>   Staging: slicoss: Fix long line issues in slicoss.c (2014-12-02 16:54:43 -0800)
> >>>
> >>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> Staging patches for 3.19-rc1
> >>>
> >>> Here's the big staging tree pull request for 3.19-rc1.
> >>>
> >>> We continued to delete more lines than were added, always a good thing,
> >>> but not at a huge rate this release, only about 70k lines removed
> >>> overall mostly from removing the horrid bcm driver.
> >>>
> >>> Lots of normal staging driver cleanups and fixes all over the place,
> >>> well over a thousand of them, the shortlog shows all the horrid details.
> >>>
> >>> The "contentious" thing here is the movement of the Android binder code
> >>> out of staging into the "real" part of the kernel.  This is code that
> >>> has been stable for a few years now and is working as-is in the tens of
> >>> millions of devices with no issues.  Yes, the code is horrid, and the
> >>> userspace api leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not going to change
> >>> due to legacy issues that we have no control over.  Because so many
> >>> devices and companies rely on this, and the code is stable, might as
> >>> well promote it out of staging.
> >>>
> >>> This was all discussed at the Linux Plumbers conference, and everyone
> >>> participating agreed that this was the best way forward.
> >>>
> >>> There is work happening to replace the binder code with something new
> >>> that is happening right now, but I don't expect to see the results of
> >>> that work for another year at the earliest.  If that ever happens, and
> >>> Android switches over to it, I'll gladly remove this version
> >>
> >> I don't understand this kind of logic.
> >> a) Binder is considered a piece of shite.
> > 
> > A piece of "shite" that works for the domain it is in, and people rely
> > on it.
> 
> Using this argument we could merge every singe vendor tree too.
> The crap they carry works for their domain too... ;-)

That's a false-argument, you know that.  This code falls into the
"distros have been using it and it is proven to work" requirement that
we have often made for new features.

Fact is, this is useful code, in this area.  In the domain it is used
in, it works properly, and the abi is sufficient.  Yes, it's ugly in
spaces, and insecure if used outside of Android, but that's ok for the
users of the code.

> >> b) Google is working on a (hopefully sane) replacement.
> > 
> > I never said that Google was the one working on a replacement.
> 
> Okay. Who is working on it?

Some other company, it's not my place to pre-announce projects, sorry.

> Is there a change that Android will pick it up?

Yes.

> >> Why moving it out of staging then? What is the benefit?
> >> Keep it there for more 2-3 years and then remove it.
> > 
> > Because code in staging either has to progress forward to be merged out
> > of staging, or it gets deleted.  Just leaving it in staging for 2-4 more
> > years doesn't mean anything different from moving it to
> > drivers/android/, if I'm still maintaining it, right?  What it does say
> > is that people rely on this thing, probably you do as well, so let's
> > mark it as such.
> > 
> >> If you move it now out of staging into the core kernel it will be considered ABI
> >> and getting rid of it can be hard...
> > 
> > It's already considered an "ABI" and removing it is hard, nothing has
> > changed there.
> 
> Since when is stuff in staging considered ABI?

Since a few hundred million devices use it and we have userspace code
that relies on it and can't be changed?

thanks,

greg k-h
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