Re: [PATCH 0/7] ide: locking improvements

[Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>]

On Thu, Oct 09 2008, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 8:51 AM, Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 08 2008, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> >>
> >> Locking improvements in preparation for replacing the global ide_lock
> >> spinlock by per-hwgroup spinlocks [1].
> >>
> >> [1] patch (which is partially based on 2005 patch from Scalex86) for this
> >> is also ready but it needs some more audit and testing
> >>
> >> diffstat:
> >>  drivers/ide/ide-cd.c     |   38 ++++++-------
> >>  drivers/ide/ide-io.c     |  129 ++++++++++++++++++++---------------------------
> >>  drivers/ide/ide-ioctls.c |    3 -
> >>  drivers/ide/ide-lib.c    |    7 --
> >>  drivers/ide/ide-proc.c   |   25 +--------
> >>  drivers/ide/ide.c        |    7 --
> >>  6 files changed, 80 insertions(+), 129 deletions(-)
> >
> > Sorry, but I just have to ask 'why'? IDE is seeing a whole lot of churn
> > for something that should essentially be a stable code base in
> > maintenance mode, and now scalability improvements?
> 
> It is the stable code but being in "maintenance only mode" has never
> been true and as long as there are active users & developers there is
> really no reason to change it.

Well, maybe then it's just me who thinks that it definitely SHOULD be in
deep maintenance mode...

> > Just doesn't make ANY sense to me, sorry. We may end up with a cleaner
> > code base, but likely also a buggier one. It's not like hardware
> > coverage testing is all that great, considering some of the ancient
> > stuff it supports :-)
> 
> The changes above are relatively safe/simple and are not hardware specific.
> 
> Thanks for worring about IDE but we should be fine. :)
> 
> Bart

-- 
Jens Axboe