Re: time for some drivers to be removed?

Bas Mevissen
2003-07-25T10:32:17Z

John Bradford wrote:
> A CONFIG_KNOWN_BROKEN option is a good thing, in the case where,
> E.G. a SCSI driver is broken, and will randomly corrupt data, but
> otherwise compiles and appears to work.

I agree on that.

Maybe I should make my point more clear. What bothers me is that a lot
of (early 2.4) kernel versions could easely be configured non-compiling.
Not just for exotic configurations, but also when building for an
average PC.

That is very confusing (and anoying) for all kernel builders, as you can
not always easely tell if the kernel doesn't compile because of
misconfiguration or because of code errors.

I hope that this can be avoided for 2.6.0. "Fixing" device drivers by
calling them obsolete, is not the right way. Because drivers that are
broken and fixed by nobody might not be obsolete.

So for 2.6.0, I propose to only mark obsolete what is really obsolete.
Maybe everything that is broken since 2.2 and nobody complained about
it. Then, mark broken what is broken for some time and nobody is
(currenly) willing/able to fix.

Bas.