[Linux-ia64] Re: driver location for platform-specific drivers

[Linux-ia64] Re: driver location for platform-specific drivers

[Tom Rini]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 01:17:44PM -0600, John Hesterberg wrote:

>     3) New platform directory.
>        Create a platform directory for SN, probably drivers/sn.
>        There is precedence for this with the drivers/macintosh


Being a PPC person, I sometimes wonder if this wsn't a horrible idea
sometimes.  Much of whats in thereshould be in a 'drivers/adb' or so,
ince it's all specific to the ADB bus, with the exception of things like
'rtc.c' (which works on all PPC except APUS).  Keep in mind other
'macintosh' specific drivers, like network ones, are in drivers/net/.

Wer also have an arch/ppc/{8xx,8260}_io/ directories for other
platform-specific drivers, which I want to kill in 2.5.x timeframe.

> I'm happy with whatever you'll accept.  To give you something to
> either agree with or shoot down, I'll suggest #3.  SGI's Scalable
> Node product will be different enough, with enough platform specific
> drivers, that it justifies it's own subdirectory, and that this
> should be called drivers/sn.

What excelty are the specific to tho?  Are these all for a new bus?
If these are just variopus network, io, whatnot drivers, just put them
in drivers/whatever.

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/

[Linux-ia64] Re: driver location for platform-specific drivers

[Pete Zaitcev]

> For SGI's upcoming Linux platform (nicknamed Scalable Node, or SN),
> we have some platform specific device drivers.  Where should these go?

>     1) Integrate in drivers/*.

I'd do this, unless you have dozens of them.
E.g. drivers/net/sunhme.c.

>     2) Company (sgi) directory.

That's nonsense, IMHO.

>     3) New platform directory.
>        Create a platform directory for SN, probably drivers/sn.
>        There is precedence for this with the drivers/macintosh
>        and drivers/s390.

I think this is only done if API is different. Often these
directories cannot be processed by a build process on other
architectures, so they are kept outside to have Makefiles smaller.
See also drivers/sbus, which could be called "drivers/sun" just
as well. But really, it's separate because of sparc_alloc_io().

I appreciate a lot that drivers/acpi is so easy to exclude
from builds - it breaks on anything but Intel stuff.

>     4) New architecture directory.
>        Another suggestion is to create an architecture directory,
>        in this case drivers/ia64/{char,net,etc.}/.

See #3. The ia64 uses standard APIs.

> I'm happy with whatever you'll accept.

Yeah, lessee what penguins say, and also I think DaveM may
lend some good expirience here.

-- Pete

[Linux-ia64] Re: driver location for platform-specific drivers

[Linus Torvalds]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, John Hesterberg wrote:
>
> For SGI's upcoming Linux platform (nicknamed Scalable Node, or SN),
> we have some platform specific device drivers.  Where should these go?
> I see several precedents in the current kernels.

If they are equivalent to a new bus, make a new platform directory under
drivers, is my vote.

However, if they are likely to eventually spread out (ie they are
really PCI-based, and just your own private chips, and they might end up
as part of some other sgi platform), spread them out as normal drivers.

		Linus