From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Greg KH Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:19:45 +0000 Subject: Re: Automatic download and installation of drivers. Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 08:44:04PM +0200, Tim Jansen wrote: > On Tuesday 16 October 2001 18:52, Greg KH wrote: > > The current linux-hotplug interface solves this problem. The driver > > itself lets the kernel/world know for what devices it supports. Coming > > from the other direction (what driver supports this device) is just as > > easy. Look at modules.usbmap and modules.pcimap for examples. > > But how does this help for drivers that are not installed yet because they > are not part of the kernel? This is the reason for downloading drivers. If the running (old) kernel does not know about the devices, but a future kernel does, then you have all the same problems that I listed before (kernel api, compilers, .config, etc.) Download the whole kernel, it's the only way, as there is not going to be a common binary or source api for Linux kernel drivers, like other operating systems have. > > By putting the driver into the tree, all the problems go away, users > > don't have to compile their own drivers, the drivers are all distributed > > by the different Linux vendors, vendors don't have to update their > > driver for every kernel api change, and everyone is happy. > > I doubt that this will make hardware vendors happy: > - their devices cannot be supported before they are included in a kernel. > Assuming a world where new devices are released with vendor-supported linux > drivers this would mean that a new device cannot be released before their > drivers are in the kernel and distributions picked this kernel up. Vendors who work with open source drivers, typically have their Linux drivers updated _before_ the hardware hits the shelves. See the keyspan and edgeport USB drivers for examples of this. > - vendors lose control of their device drivers even though their quality is > crucial for the success of their products Then the vendors have the maintainer of the driver be an employee. This is quite common (myself included.) Look at most all of the SCSI drivers for other examples. > This is also a problem for users. Most distributions do update between 1 and > 4 times updates per year. This means that users have to wait for their driver > up to one year before they can buy new devices or get an update for their > driver. Then if a vendor wants a specific driver built for a specific distro's kernel, due to the distro not having support for it, they build it. I've done this in the past for some companies, it's not that hard, just a pain getting all of the .config settings correct (which is what any "automated" system would have to do also.) thanks, greg k-h _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel