Re: Moving sound/* to drivers/ ?

Linus Torvalds
2008-05-22T15:06:01Z

On Thu, 22 May 2008, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>
> I am in favor of keeping /sound around with the
> non-hardware-dependent code, much like /block does with regard to
> /drivers/block.

I'd personally *much* rather have just one subdirectory.

I realize that block/ and drivers/block/ (and net/ vs drivers/net/) has
come up several times as an example that isn't that way, BUT:

- that's actually the odd man out. It's more common to do it the other
way (and examples have already been given: drivers/usb/core, just plain
drivers/base, drivers/scsi/ (where it's all mixed up and a lot of
low-level drivers are in subdirectories of their own), etc etc.

- perhaps more importantly, it's totally different from 'sound' in that
the block/ and drivers/block/ maintainership is actually *separate*.

The same is actually true of net/ and drivers/net/ too. It so happens
that within the last few months, drivers/net/ gets merged through the
same maintainer as net/, but they really end up being maintained
separately other than that.

So the block/ and net/ layers have very much a higher level of separation
from their drivers. sound has always been very much _maintained_ as a
block, even if it then internally may be separate pieces. Partly this is
from historical reasons, I'm sure, but it's true none-the-less.

So from an outside view, having a single subdirectory makes sense, because
that's how it has always been maintained.

So I'd personally much rather see just one drivers/sound/ than have this
split up.

Linus