Re: State of the Linux PCI and PCI Hotplug Subsystems for 2.6.16-rc5

[Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>]

On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 15:40 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 06:34:54PM -0500, Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 15:23 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > > 
> > > > That should not go in 2.6.16 - it's not a hardware bug but a (poor IMHO)
> > > > design decision by the vendor.  And, it may break working setups when an
> > > > extra sound device shows up.
> > > 
> > > Ah, good thing I held off :)
> > > 
> > > Any objections to it going in for 2.6.17?
> > 
> > I can't think of a way to merge this and guarantee not to break
> > userspace unless it could be disabled by default.
> 
> Ok, how about you and Bauke (CCed, and the author of the patch) work
> together on the problem and let me know what you decide on.

The best option might be to just take a chance on breaking things - if
userspace is so fragile that an extra sound device appearing breaks
things, it could also be broken merely by adding a new driver to the
kernel.  If we have to worry about this kind of breakage the "no
incompatible changes" policy becomes "no new features".

That's my $0.02, it's between the patch author and the maintainer what
you want to do.

Lee