Re: 2.3 wish: integrate pcmcia into mainstream kernel

Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:36:31 +1000

David Hinds writes:
> On Wed, Jun 02, 1999 at 12:35:55PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> >
> > Well: when someone does big changes to kernel (like turning way
> > wait-queues are declared), he/she tends to fix all places in linux
> > kernel. He/she certainly will break few drivers. Problem with pcmcia
> > drivers is that all of them are allways broken this little way. Is
> > pcmcia package distributed in form of patches?
>
> Didn't even the wait-queue changes take a release or two to completely
> settle out? PCMCIA is not "always" broken in this sort of way... it
> has happened a few times, and each time, an update was available
> within days. There are relatively few kernel updates that are simple
> global find-and-replace operations.

It took less than a week for most (all?) drivers in the kernel to be
updated, IIRC, once 2.3.1 was released. The day after 2.3.1 was
available I sent you the patch for the PCMCIA drivers, but it took a
couple of weeks before a new tarball was available on your ftp site.

I'm not criticising, we all are overloaded. But it seems to me that
when Linus accepts a patch that breaks everything, he is implicitly
prepared to spend the next few days being prompt in accepting and
releasing patches which fix the drivers. So even when "everything
breaks", things are fixed quickly, and just as important, the fixes
are integrated and made public.

This doesn't seem to happen for externally maintained drivers, as
those maintainers haven't planned/committed to a sudden flurry of
work. Speaking as a user, this can be fustrating when you depend on
these 3rd party drivers. Putting the PCMCIA drivers into the kernel
would help this situation, I think. And with laptops becoming
increasingly popular, closer integration is needed, IMHO.

Regards,

Richard....

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