Re: [Q]: Linux and real device drivers

Dale Amon (amon@vnl.com)
Fri, 24 Sep 1999 14:11:08 +0100 (BST)

> Werner Almesberger <almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch> sez:
> The main problem I perceive with drivers in the mainstream kernel
> tree is that changes may happen without the respective maintainer
> knowing why. Maybe it would be good if people get into the habit of
> marking changes they make to other people's code with a short
> comment. Disadvantage: the original maintainer has to issue a patch
> every once in a while just to remove the markings, increasing the
> overall patch load.
>

I worked on Fortran and assembly code projects with multiple programmers
working in the same sections. The pre-rcs way of coordinating this
is the change tag:

/* DMA19990924: I did something here because blah caused foo
DMA19990924: and I even need multiple lines to explain it */

It is quite easy for anyone to grep the tags of changes done by
a particular entity and/or in a particular time frame.

(Although admittedly my 70's tags were not Y2K compliant ;-)

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