[CC list cut to l-k]
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Face it. Every once in a while, you have to start afresh. Tell people that
> "Ok, we can't share this code any more, it's getting to be a major
> disaster".
Agreed.
> We've done this quite successfully several times. Each time it resulted in
> a better product. Which is exactly the reverse of what you advocate.
>
> Example 1: "hd.c" was left alone, "ide.c" was created. Some day, we'll
Well, 90% true - some ide stuff went into hd.c before ide.c was spawned.
The hd.c now is essentially the same as in linux-1.0.9 as I took the ide
stuff back out again.
> Example 3: ne2k driver. Nope, the ne.c file was not just expanded to
> handle yet another card type. Yes, it shares the basic 8390 code anyway.
Actually I did expand ne.c to handle PCI versions prior to ne2k-pci.c
Seemed appropriate when a PCI NE2000 was just an anomaly - who knew a brain
fart from some misguided designer would result in a plague of these things.
But having ne2k-pci separate is a win - it gets to drop legacy code like
the bad clone list and 8 bit I/O support. And it will allow me (in 2.5)
to eject all the PCI code from ne.c - returning it to an ISA only state
like early 2.0 kernels.
Point being something like it may not be obvious that starting afresh
is the Right Thing until you've tried too hard to share - and once the
fresh start has proved itself, go back and clean up the mess made of the
old one while bending over backwards trying to support everything...
Paul.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 23 2000 - 21:00:08 EST