From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Lord Subject: Re: Merging libata PATA support into the base kernel Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:47:07 -0400 Message-ID: <44DCA67B.5070400@rtr.ca> References: <1155144599.5729.226.camel@localhost.localdomain> <44DA4288.6020806@rtr.ca> <44DACE9F.3090909@garzik.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from rtr.ca ([64.26.128.89]:8423 "EHLO mail.rtr.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932169AbWHKPrO (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:47:14 -0400 In-Reply-To: <44DACE9F.3090909@garzik.org> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: Jeff Garzik Cc: Alan Cox , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-ide@vger.kernel.org Jeff Garzik wrote: > Mark Lord wrote: >> This will also allow time for things like "udev" to perhaps think about >> an option to someday provide /dev/hd* symlinks for PATA devices when >> libata is used instead of IDE (?). That might be a possible migration >> path in the far future. > > Unfortunately a symlink won't work because of compatibility issues. > /dev/hd supports more partitions, and a different set of ioctls. Anything that depends upon the extra partitions is going to have a difficult time regardless of whether or not they edit /etc/fstab to change "hda" into "sda" etc.. And libata already has sufficient ioctl compatibility for nearly all purposes with the old drivers/ide stuff. Yes, there are some more esoteric ioctls that I once implemented in drivers/ide that do not exist for libata, and nobody will miss them. Cheers