From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758455AbWK3HJN (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:09:13 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1758457AbWK3HJN (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:09:13 -0500 Received: from mailout.stusta.mhn.de ([141.84.69.5]:39941 "HELO mailout.stusta.mhn.de") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1758429AbWK3HJM (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:09:12 -0500 Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:09:17 +0100 From: Adrian Bunk To: David Woodhouse Cc: Simon Evans , linux-pcmcia@lists.infradead.org, linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC: 2.6 patch] remove the broken MTD_PCMCIA driver Message-ID: <20061130070917.GH11084@stusta.de> References: <20061118214056.GB31879@stusta.de> <1164752187.14595.20.camel@pmac.infradead.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1164752187.14595.20.camel@pmac.infradead.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 10:16:27PM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote: > On Sat, 2006-11-18 at 22:40 +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > The MTD_PCMCIA driver has: > > - already been marked as BROKEN in 2.6.0 three years ago and > > - is still marked as BROKEN. > > > > Drivers that had been marked as BROKEN for such a long time seem to be > > unlikely to be revived in the forseeable future. > > Actually, there's hardware currently on its way to me, and I plan to fix > this driver fairly soon. OK. > > But if anyone wants to ever revive this driver, the code is still > > present in the older kernel releases. > > I'm unconvinced by that argument in the general case. People don't go > looking back through git history, do they? Drivers such as this don't > really do any harm as they are, and they're _much_ easier to find when > someone does want to fix them up. If there is an already merged driver that is marked as broken for a long time, there are usually two possible cases: - it is really unused - patches to fix it are pending or floating around A patch to remove a driver is usually the best way for getting the information which case a driver belongs into (a good example might be the zr36120 driver that seems to have found a new maintainer due to my removal patch). And if there's no reaction, the usefullness of very outdated and usually non-compiling code is quite questionable. > dwmw2 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