Re: Re: [patch 11/12] new sony_acpi driver

Stelian Pop
2005-03-03T09:39:50Z

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 09:40:45AM +0100, Timo Hoenig wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 21:53 +0100, Stelian Pop wrote:
> [...]
> >
> >I have no problem keeping it out of the tree, it has been this was
> >for quite a long time now. Anyway the distro maintainers are starting
> >to put it into their kernels so it won't be a problem for endusers
> >any longer. BTW, it was those distro maintainers who asked me to
> >resubmit the driver lately...
> >
> I guess you're talking about me.

Not only you.

> I did not contact you being a distro
> maintainer. As developer, my intention was -- and still is -- that we
> really should get as many laptop specific functions into mainline as
> possible. I care about happy users.

So do I.

Unhappy users also come bugging me (because I also maintain a non-ACPI
sony driver which did work with older models but works less and less
with newer ones) and I have to tell them about sony_acpi. Maybe I
should tell them to bug acpi_devel instead ?

> It's a shame that there are actually drivers out there but users simply
> do not benefit from them because they are not merged with mainline.

I fully agree.

> Anyway, as Len proposed, a generic solution is definitely the best
> solution. Let's get this work done.

Except the generic solution doesn't exist. It could be partly
implemented (like acpi_video), but it will never be complete.

> >But still, I don't see why there is no place for a sony acpi somewhere
> >where there are already drivers for ibm, toshiba and asus laptops.
>
> They will disappear once the generic solution is implemented.

Maybe the problem here is that the ACPI based drivers should not
be at all in the ACPI tree.

drivers/acpi contain today both the ACPI layer and the ACPI drivers.
Maybe a split up like the networking code would be saner: $KDIR/acpi
for the layer and $KDIR/drivers/acpi for the drivers using the acpi
API to implements specific drivers.

Stelian.
--
Stelian Pop <stelian-ibX4/ixPftWsTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org>