Re: PCI Constants Update for SATA Driver

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Sun, 2005-02-27 at 13:08 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Henning Schmiedehausen wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > having the various constants in pci_ids.h is a really good thing for
> > grepping through the kernel source. And if they were used, it would be
> > even better (if you e.g. are looking for which driver claims an SIImage
> > 3112 card...). However, the sata_xxx.c files in the drivers/scsi
> > directory are notorious for not using the PCI Ids but just hard coded
> > numbers.
> > 
> > This patch tries to fix this. It is against the 2.6.10 tree from Fedora
> > Core 3 but should apply to a regular 2.6.10 too.
> 
> "Notorious", heh.  This is quite intentional.
> 
> PCI device ids are just random numbers that vendors pick out of thin 
> air.  Device id symbolic constants have little value, and creates churn 
> whereby every kernel hacker is patching include/linux/pci_ids.h.

I still agree that it's handy to use the constants in pci_ids.h when
available, I do that for grepping regulary.

What I usually do is that I separately send patches updating pci_ids.h
and driver patches. In some cases, I leave the numeric constant in the
driver until I'm sure the pci_ids.h patch got in, then eventually fix up
the driver to use the constant.

Ben.