On 4/10/2024 10:35 AM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 17:12:18 +0200 Jiri Pirko wrote:
For these kind of unused drivers, I think it would be legit to
disallow any internal/external api changes. Just do that for some
normal driver, then benefit from the changes in the unused driver.
Unused is a bit strong, and we didn't put netdevsim in a special
directory. Let's see if more such drivers appear and if there
are practical uses for the separation for scripts etc?
The practical use I see that the reviewer would spot right away is
someone pushes a feature implemented in this unused driver only.
Say it would be a clear mark for a driver of lower category.
For the person doing API change it would be an indication that he
does not have that cautious to not to break anything in this driver.
The driver maintainer should be the one to deal with potential issues.
Hm, we currently group by vendor but the fact it's a private device
is probably more important indeed. For example if Google submits
a driver for a private device it may be confusing what's public
cloud (which I think/hope GVE is) and what's fully private.
So we could categorize by the characteristic rather than vendor:
drivers/net/ethernet/${term}/fbnic/
I'm afraid it may be hard for us to agree on an accurate term, tho.
"Unused" sounds.. odd, we don't keep unused code, "private"
sounds like we granted someone special right not took some away,
maybe "exclusive"? Or "besteffort"? Or "staging" :D IDK.
Do we really need that categorization at the directory/filesystem level?
cannot we just document it clearly in the Kconfig help text and under
Documentation/networking/?
--
Florian
