From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Miller Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Ethtool style in kernel network driver configuration. Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:01:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <20090612.170128.213931980.davem@davemloft.net> References: <20090611.170948.66762524.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: bhutchings@solarflare.com, nico@cam.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: mfuzzey@gmail.com Return-path: Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:45196 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750880AbZFMAB1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:01:27 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: From: Martin Fuzzey Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:19:11 +0200 > The smc9x driver contains this comment : > /* > * The internal workings of the driver. If you are changing anything > * here with the SMC stuff, you should have the datasheet and know > * what you are doing. > */ > Before writing this patch I had to disregard this to do the hacked version. > I wasn't touching the driver to improve it or fix it - in which case > it would be quite reasonable to expect me to have read the datasheet > but just to turn off a bit of functionality to work around broken > hardware. I don't expect anyone to be required to read a data-sheet just to prevent some link mode settings. If the driver isn't clean enough to make a change like that easy, that's a bug. This is just a scarecrow argument.