Re: [RFC PATCH] x86: create drivers/x86/ from drivers/misc/

From: Len Brown
Date: Fri Nov 28 2008 - 18:16:52 EST




> > Move x86 platform specific drivers from drivers/misc/
> > to a new home under drivers/x86/.
> >
> > The community has been maintaining x86 platform specific drivers
> > under /drivers/misc/ for a few years. The oldest ones started
> > life under drivers/acpi, but got booted out because they are
> > generally vendor-specific extensions to ACPI, or simply
> > users of ACPI, rather than implementers of the ACPI spec.
> >
> > The thing that they have in common is that they are
> > x86 vendor specific platform drivers. So when asked,
> > Linus suggested we move them to drivers/x86.
>
> We already have 81 one directory entries under drivers/
> and with patch you open up for an additional
> directory for each arch - not elegant.

I followed the example of drivers/s390/,
per Linus' suggestion.

The other place that seemed to suggest itself was
arch/x86/drivers/, as we already have:

arch/um/drivers/
arch/sh/drivers/
arch/cris/*/drivers/

> As it is today (before this patch) the directories unider
> drivers/ said what the drivers was used for - which is logical.
>
> But with this new arch specific directory it is no longer obvious
> is a driver should be located under say drivers/net/* or
> drivers/arm/* in case it is a arm specific driver.

These are vendor-specific, aka "platform specific" drivers
for various x86 platforms.

> What is wrong with the current location under misc/*?

mostly that it "misc" means nothing at all...
Indeed, misc should probably be deleted for this reason...

> If there is a good reason to keep them separated
> follow the style of other directories under
> drivers/* and introduce drivers/misc/x86.

is there an example besides lguest/x86?

> git format-patch -M -B is your friend...

here you go: