From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [PATCH] New driver "sfc" for Solarstorm SFC4000 controller (try #7) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 12:39:37 -0800 Message-ID: <20080303123937.2d72d7e8@extreme> References: <20080303185624.GC2988@solarflare.com> <20080303.110206.36977456.davem@davemloft.net> <1204572175.16248.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Miller , bhutchings@solarflare.com, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Dan Williams Return-path: Received: from mail.vyatta.com ([216.93.170.194]:57152 "EHLO mail.vyatta.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751958AbYCCUjq (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Mar 2008 15:39:46 -0500 In-Reply-To: <1204572175.16248.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:22:55 -0500 Dan Williams wrote: > On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 11:02 -0800, David Miller wrote: > > From: Ben Hutchings > > Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 18:56:24 +0000 > > > > > The patch (against netdev-2.6) is at: > > > https://support.solarflare.com/netdev/7/netdev-2.6-sfc-2.2.0106.patch > > > > Nobody can properly review the driver if it's off on some external web > > site instead of posted here. > > The diff is 707K; I certainly thought that netdev had a message size > limit. What's the proper policy on splitting up _new_ drivers? There > may/may not be a good way of splitting up any given new driver for > piecemeal in-line review. If there's not, what's the alternative? Part of the problem is that you put a lot of stuff all in one driver: * sensors support * large debugfs chunk * efx driver layer * event queue You created a big monolith. No one likes reading big stuff, it requires lots of time, as much as going over a whole subsystem. The fact that so many callbacks and hooks are needed implies that the design got out of hand for a simple device. Maybe an alternative would be to make your device better match existing infrastructure. The EFX code looks like a separate driver which should show up as a bus in the driver model, not a network device. Other people who don't just do network device could help as well.