Re: [GIT PULL] Staging driver patches for 3.19-rc1

Greg KH
2014-12-15T18:30:43Z

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 07:23:35PM +0100, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 6:55 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > The following changes since commit 009d0431c3914de64666bec0d350e54fdd59df6a:
> >
> > Linux 3.18-rc7 (2014-11-30 16:42:27 -0800)
> >
> > are available in the git repository at:
> >
> > git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging.git/ tags/staging-3.19-rc1
> >
> > for you to fetch changes up to 17d2c6439be65777245914be354c5a97c76ad246:
> >
> > Staging: slicoss: Fix long line issues in slicoss.c (2014-12-02 16:54:43 -0800)
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Staging patches for 3.19-rc1
> >
> > Here's the big staging tree pull request for 3.19-rc1.
> >
> > We continued to delete more lines than were added, always a good thing,
> > but not at a huge rate this release, only about 70k lines removed
> > overall mostly from removing the horrid bcm driver.
> >
> > Lots of normal staging driver cleanups and fixes all over the place,
> > well over a thousand of them, the shortlog shows all the horrid details.
> >
> > The "contentious" thing here is the movement of the Android binder code
> > out of staging into the "real" part of the kernel. This is code that
> > has been stable for a few years now and is working as-is in the tens of
> > millions of devices with no issues. Yes, the code is horrid, and the
> > userspace api leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not going to change
> > due to legacy issues that we have no control over. Because so many
> > devices and companies rely on this, and the code is stable, might as
> > well promote it out of staging.
> >
> > This was all discussed at the Linux Plumbers conference, and everyone
> > participating agreed that this was the best way forward.
> >
> > There is work happening to replace the binder code with something new
> > that is happening right now, but I don't expect to see the results of
> > that work for another year at the earliest. If that ever happens, and
> > Android switches over to it, I'll gladly remove this version
>
> I don't understand this kind of logic.
> a) Binder is considered a piece of shite.

A piece of "shite" that works for the domain it is in, and people rely
on it.

> b) Google is working on a (hopefully sane) replacement.

I never said that Google was the one working on a replacement.

> Why moving it out of staging then? What is the benefit?
> Keep it there for more 2-3 years and then remove it.

Because code in staging either has to progress forward to be merged out
of staging, or it gets deleted. Just leaving it in staging for 2-4 more
years doesn't mean anything different from moving it to
drivers/android/, if I'm still maintaining it, right? What it does say
is that people rely on this thing, probably you do as well, so let's
mark it as such.

> If you move it now out of staging into the core kernel it will be considered ABI
> and getting rid of it can be hard...

It's already considered an "ABI" and removing it is hard, nothing has
changed there.

thanks,

greg k-h