I believe the following options are missing in the current setup of 
how libata is configured and selected in the kernel config program.  
First, a clarification as to just what needs to be selected to actually 
use libata governed drives. Second, since libata is being treated as a 
alternative to scsi and ide, it should have the same options as those 
until it fully replaces ide and the general blk devices can be moved to 
a "shared" config option.

So I just wrote up a little patch to the ata driver's Kconfig that adds 
in the "missing" blk dev selection options so a user doesn't have to do 
what they had to do when ata was under scsi's low level drivers in the 
first place, which somewhat negates the whole movement of ata out of 
scsi.   This should clear up a lot of confusion among users who are 
coming to libata from ide and dont really get or want to get why it has 
anything to do with selecting scsi drivers.   

Hopefully this shared code between scsi and ata will be moved to a more 
"general block device" option when ide is removed and everything is seen 
as scsi devices anyway so we wont have to refer to them as "scsi devices". 

this patch is against 2.6.18-mm3.