Re: Linux 2.5.70

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 02:09:43PM -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:
> 
> Allow me to clarify... I don't mind drivers not working.  I *do* mind
> drivers emitting hundreds of warnings and errors because dozens of things
> were changed and no one cared to update everything they broke.  In some
> cases, fixing things may be simple (eg. someone removed or renamed a field
> in a struct somewhere) and in others years of work my be required (eg.
> the new module interface.)

Many warnings are for problems that were already present in 2.4 or for
using deprecated (IOW: working) functions. It might be a thought to
probably disable deprecated warnings for stable kernel releases (read
2.6.0, 2.6.1,...) but it's not always a measurement for how far away we
are from 2.6. And besides, a full build of 2.4.20 with gcc 2.95 gives
you 103 warnings.

> In my opinion (as it was in the long long ago), everything in a "stable"
> release should at least compile cleanly -- "working" comes later after
> users have been conned into using it.

IMHO compiling and non-working (or worse: working but data-corrupting) 
is worse than non-compiling. It might be a good idea to let broken 
drivers depend on an (undefined) CONFIG_BROKEN, but this is only a minor 
detail with no influence on the 2.6 schedule.

> --Ricky

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed