From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lazybastard.de ([212.112.238.170] helo=longford.lazybastard.org) by canuck.infradead.org with esmtps (Exim 4.63 #1 (Red Hat Linux)) id 1HP0bj-0000a7-KI for linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org; Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:11:31 -0500 Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 19:07:47 +0100 From: =?utf-8?B?SsO2cm4=?= Engel To: ian@brightstareng.com Subject: Re: JFFS2 Support for Large Flash Designs Message-ID: <20070307180743.GC16439@lazybastard.org> References: <200703071223.07485.ian@brightstareng.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <200703071223.07485.ian@brightstareng.com> Cc: linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org List-Id: Linux MTD discussion mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Please keep me on the Cc: list. On Wed, 7 March 2007 12:23:07 -0500, ian@brightstareng.com wrote: > > There are some positives of having components maintained outside > the context of "linux". Can you name those? > Yaffs actually has a life outside linux. Using "outside the > mainline" as an argument is weak at best. The 2.6 kernel > makefile makes building a module outside the tree trivial -- so > lots of the older build hassles and arguments no longer exist. If building it were our only problem... Problems that cause much more trouble are: o Following the changing in-kernel APIs. I maintain several out-of-tree projects myself and can tell you it is a pain. At times I don't update my kernel for month because I lack the time to update the cowlink patches. o Problem support. Unless the code is in mainline, the only person that will be willing to assist a user is the one responsible for the out-of-tree project. Such support can be good, on average it tends to be somewhat worse. o Code maturity. Face it, there is often a reason why the code is not in mainline. How much of the above applies to YAFFS is a seperate question I don't want to answer. But in general, being wary of out-of-tree code is a good thing. Jörn -- "Error protection by error detection and correction." -- from a university class