Re: [RFC][PATCH] driver model and sysfs support for PCMCIA (1/3)

[Dominik Brodowski]

Hi Adam,

First of all I'd like to say that I'm glad you're taking interest in 
the PCMCIA core, and that your experience and patch-writing skills will
surely be a valuable addition in the joint effort of transforming the 
PCMCIA subsystem to "kernel standards", e.g. hotplug, driver model and 
sysfs.

Second, you might not know about the linux-pcmcia list 
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-pcmcia
yet -- it's where most PCMCIA-core-in-2.{6,7} stuff is discussed, and it is quite
low-traffic. Please CC this list on PCMCIA-core-in-2.{6,7} matters in
future.

Third, about your patches:
- I like many ideas in your patches -- large parts of them, though, are
  "double work" as similar things have already been submitted (by me) 
  to Russell on the linux-pcmcia mailing list. What's missing in my current
  patches [proof-of-concepts do exist and had been announced both on lkml
  and on said linux-pcmcia list, though] is the exporting of product and
  manufactor ID and "vers_1" strings, because that needs better resource
  handling.
- the resource_ready handling is "racy", at least. Resources can disappear
  again.
- what I don't like in your patches is that they add an aditional "layer"
  and thus additional complexity on top of PCMCIA. It already has a multitude of
  structs with different lifetime rules. Your additions don't make it easier
  to simplify this complexity. That's why my patchsets [*] try to reduce the
  complexity first, add struct pcmcia_device next, and reduce complexity by
  merging other stuff into struct pcmcia_device in the third step. I'd need
  to re-check whether the step (1) you're leaving out does _not_ cause
  lifetime headaches and races in strange circumstances [and I don't mean
  PCMCIA net drivers here, as they're in a comparably good shape.]

	Dominik

[*] these patchsets have been announced in these messages:
1) http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-pcmcia/2004-May/000877.html
2) http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-pcmcia/2004-May/000878.html
3) http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-pcmcia/2004-May/000880.html
4) http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-pcmcia/2004-May/000881.html
5) http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-pcmcia/2004-May/000882.html

Attachment: pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature