Re: C99 Initialisers

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 05:37:42PM -0700, Randy.Dunlap wrote:
>  > | I would much rather move the PCI ids out of the 
>  > | drivers altogether, into some metadata file(s) in the kernel source 
>  > | tree, than bloat up tg3, tulip, e100, and the other PCI id-heavy 
>  > | drivers' source code.
>  > 
>  > That last few lines certainly sounds desirable.
> 
> What exactly would be the benefit of this ?
> The only thing I could think of was out-of-kernel tools to do
> things like matching modules to pci IDs, but that seems to be
> done mechanically by various distros already reading the pci_driver
> structs.


Fundamentally, the PCI ID list is not C code.  And if anyone ever wants 
to get to the PCI ID lists at the _source code_ level, they have to 
parse C or assembler :)  It's data, so I say, put it in a data file. 
Stuffing the PCI ID list in C code is a sometimes convenient, sometimes 
inconvenient form of packaging, nothing more :)

I would rather store the PCI ID list in a more natural form, and then 
use small tool to generate the pci_device_id tables that are linked into 
the kernel.

	Jeff