Re: [PATCH] staging: update TODO files for rts5139 & rts_pstor

[Dan Carpenter]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 05:08:25PM +0800, edwin_rong wrote:
> On 05/16/2012 03:20 PM, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> > When is the new driver going to be released?  How can we tell if
> > it's better than the cleaned up staging driver without seeing it?
> >
> > regards,
> > dan carpenter
> Hi Dan carpenter,
> 
> > When is the new driver going to be released?
> 
> I'm afraid it will take a long time before we release it to kernel. You
> know that Realtek now has several series of card reader on the market, and
> we have to integrated these ICs into the new driver, and make sure it
> works well, in addition, now we're working on another new card reader IC.
> Once everything is done, the driver will be released.
> 
> >  How can we tell if it's better than the cleaned up staging driver without seeing it?
> Yes, quite right. Seeing is believing.
> 

This seems like we're going down the broadcom model where we have
the b34_legacy, b43, brcm drivers.  We've got three drivers for
broadcom cards and there is some overlap on which hardware they
support.  The first two were developed by the community and the brcm
driver was developed by Broadcom and it's the only one they support.
It was a frustrating experience.  We came very close to dropping the
brcm drivers.

The thing about the brcm drivers was that the Broadcom devs did all
their development in the open.  We knew they had worked hard and
were responsive to bug reports and code criticism.

The kernel history is full of people working hard for years on code
and then having it rejected and not merged.  When it comes to
drivers we often think we'll write a new driver and drop the old one
but it doesn't always happen.  We still have OSS sound drivers from
90s.

It's best to put up a git tree with the new driver as soon as
possible.  I would try get stuff merged into the kernel as soon as
possible.

regards,
dan carpenter

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