From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dave Airlie Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2010-discuss] [v2] Remaining BKL users, what to do Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:00:09 +1000 Message-ID: References: <201009161632.59210.arnd@arndb.de> <201010181742.06678.arnd@arndb.de> <20101018184346.GD27089@kroah.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: Arnd Bergmann , codalist@telemann.coda.cs.cmu.edu, ksummit-2010-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, autofs@linux.kernel.org, Jan Harkes , Samuel Ortiz , Jan Kara , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo , netdev@vger.kernel.org, Anders Larsen , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, Bryan Schumaker , Christoph Hellwig , Petr Vandrovec , Mikulas Patocka , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Evgeniy Dushistov , Ingo Molnar , Andrew Hendry , linux-media@vger.kernel.org To: Greg KH Return-path: Received: from mail-wy0-f174.google.com ([74.125.82.174]:42438 "EHLO mail-wy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754207Ab0JRXAM (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:00:12 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20101018184346.GD27089@kroah.com> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Greg KH wrote: > On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 05:42:06PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote: >> >> Out of the remaining modules, I guess i810/i830, adfs, hpfs and ufs might end >> up not getting fixed at all, we can either mark them non-SMP or move them >> to drivers/staging once all the others are done. > > I recommend moving them to staging, and then retire them from there if > no one steps up to maintain them. I think this sets a bad precedent, these drivers work fine. Removing BKL from them is hard, and involves finding and booting hw that developers don't have much time/interest in at the moment. Anyone who has access to the i810 hw and has time to work out the locking has more important things to be doing with modern hw, however it doesn't mean we should just drop support for old drivers because they don't have active maintainers. Removing the BKL from the kernel is a great goal, but breaking userspace ABI by removing drivers isn't. Dave.