On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 10:24:56AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote: > > Adrian Bunk wrote: > > >On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 06:22:55PM +0100, Jean Delvare wrote: > > > > > >>Hi Adrian, > > >> > > >> > > >>>The mcd driver drives only very old hardware (some single and double > > >>>speed CD drives that were connected either via the soundcard or a > > >>>special ISA card), and the mcdx driver offers more functionality for > > >>>the same hardware. > > >>> > > >>>My plan is to mark MCD as broken in 2.6.11 and if noone complains > > >>>completely remove this driver some time later. > > >>>(...) > > >>>- depends on CD_NO_IDESCSI > > >>>+ depends on CD_NO_IDESCSI && BROKEN > > >> > > >>Shouldn't we introduce a DEPRECATED option for use in cases like this > > >>one? > > > > > > > > >We could. > > > > > >We could also list MCD in Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt > > >first. > > > > > >But in this case I doubt it makes any difference. > > > > > >This driver is for hardware where I doubt many users exist today, and it > > >should have been removed nearly ten years ago when the better mcdx > > >driver for the same now-obsolete hardware entered the kernel. > > > > I actually have one (or two) of these, but I agree that in this case it > > makes no difference. As a general thing I think DEPRECIATED would be > > useful for the case where there is a newer functional driver. The > > systems I have are unlikely to ever run a current kernel, so I am not > > affected, and I suspect most others who have this old stuff are running > > 2.0 or 2.2 kernels, also. > > Are you using the mcd or the mcdx driver? > > At 2.2 times, I also had such a drive. > But I didn't observe any need for the mcd driver that was already > outdated at that time.
Exactly, that one can go for sure. > > The mcd driver should perhaps have been removed 10 years ago when the > mcdx driver was introduced. You could start today with deprecating the > mcd driver instead of a quick removal of this driver. But why? The > question is whether the number of people using one of these drives with > a 2.6 kernel is above zero or not - not whether we need one or two > drivers for them. In case my first note wasn't clear, I'm in favor of DEPRECIATED as a supported feature, the mcd driver can just go away I would think. I believe I'm using the mcdx driver in my old systems, but whatever is there is presumably going to stay in the old kernels, and I can't imagine ever building another kernel for a box that old. They are happily chugging along, and when they die they will go to the 2nd hand store. If the disks have anything requiring disposal (I think not), I will drill a few holes in them before scrapping. If it wouldn't be a LOT of work, I would think that using a DEPRECIATED driver could be noted in some way in an oops, like tainted. That's just a thought, feel free to comment, but don't expect me to defend the idea, I'm just sharing it. -- bill davidsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
