Re: Parallel ATA with libata status with the patches I'm working on

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

My general take on things:

* Supporting PATA has always been a long term libata goal (and people 
have known this for years).

* I try to stay as far as possible away from the fight between Alan and 
Bart.  As the changelog shows, I've merged libata patches from both.

* Alan's patches do tend to come straight to me, and it would be nice if 
he CC'd them to a list (linux-ide).

* Nonetheless, they get exposure in -mm (via libata-dev.git) for a 
while, before going upstream.

* The non-core changes, i.e. Alan and Albert's PATA drivers, aren't 
going upstream for a while, and will be instead living in -mm (via my 
"pata-drivers" libata-dev.git branch)  Too much breakage and user 
confusion will occur if they are pushed {today|soon}.

* CONFIG_IDE=n is still largely for developers and brave souls only (or 
for lucky owners of the newest boxes, which simply don't have PATA on 
them at all).