Re: [PATCH] libata: remove experimental tag on PATA drivers

Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz
2009-11-14T00:15:32Z

On Saturday 14 November 2009 00:46:29 Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> On Friday 13 November 2009 19:25:15 Alan Cox wrote:
> > > Fine but please update status of following host drivers that were
> > > marked as "stable" prematurely by commit e3389cb first:
> > >
> > > PATA_PDC_OLD: needs to be marked as EXPERIMENTAL (or just BROKEN)
> > > - known reliability problems with UDMA
> >
> > A few odd reports apparently linked to specific chip revs. It's at
> > least as stable as the old IDE one which doesn't work on my hardware. I'd
>
> Skipping the technical merit of the quoted text for the moment -- I find
> the fact that you keep calling the present IDE host drivers (that many
> developers helped to fix) as "old" ones or "buggy" ones rather degrading
> for their (this includes me of course) hard work.
>
> Especially given your complete lack of familiarity with post-2004 changes.
>
> See for yourself, *50* mostly _trivial_ patches during *5* years:
>
> [ "git log --follow --since="5 years ago" drivers/ide|grep "Author: Alan Cox" -B1 -A3"
> output edited for easier reading ]

I've also looked at ATA side of the things for the last *3* years now:

$ git log --follow --since="3 years ago" drivers/ata|grep "Author: Alan Cox"|wc -l
173

[ ~5 patches a month and most of the work was to bring PATA on the level that
old IDE code has offered back in 2005.. ]

also before people start calling me names or teach me about "accumulated
credibility" concept:

I'm in no way trying to deny people's past achievements (hey, I got inspired
by Alan's work myself in early days) but I would like to raise the awareness
that these days it is a way more difficult than it was in the past to make
significant and/or large scale changes so new people are stuck in Catch22 when
it comes to "accumulated credibility"..

--
Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz