Re: [PATCH] first in a series to enhance microcode patches

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> In message <Pine.LNX.4.60.0410051543230.3549@localhost.localdomain> you wrote:
>>
>> that's definitely understandable.  it's just potentially confusing to
>> have a structure's reserved chunks declared as some combination of
>> uchar, ushort, uint and/or ulong, when it's obviously more
>> comprehensible to make each reserved chunk a standard array of char
>> whose size is obvious at a glance.
>
> Actually this might not be confusing, but making the code  easier  to
> read,  to  understand,  and  maybe  one day to extend - remember that
> these struct definitions are direct translations of Motorola provided
> documentation - and I tend to  believe  that  the  chip  manufacturer
> knows  more about the internals of his chips than you or me. One day,
> a "uint reserved_xxx;" may turn into a new, shiny 32 bit register.

from "Documentation/SubmittingPatches", at the very end:

   4) Don't over-design.

   Don't try to anticipate nebulous future cases which may or may not
   be useful:  "Make it as simple as you can, and no simpler"

it seems that, if that's good advice for patches, it should be good 
advice for the code proper.  i do appreciate your point, but if at 
some point, a shiny new register suddenly appears, that strikes me as 
a significant enough change that mods to the header file shouldn't be 
considered a big deal.

anyway, just my $0.02.

rday