>what's the problem with the table growing ?
>
>I would rather trade some bytes for simplicity
>(one data structure for registering PCI devices)
>and readability of the source (don't have to grok
>different methods to do the same thing).
It adds almost a kilobyte worth of extra non-swappable kernel memory
which can't be marked __init in the module case, since some pci boards
require struct pci_board for shutting down the pci board cleanly. If we
ever support hot-swappable PCI cards, then the table will have to
permanently loaded into memory even the serial driver is compiled into
the kernel.
There are a lot of people who complain that the serial driver and the
kernel in general is getting bloated, they're right. If each driver
adds an extra 1k of kernel memory just to support one vendor, over time,
we're talking **major** kernel bloat. Each tiny amount may be a
vanishly small percentage of the kernel, but added up, it becomes a mess
to deal with.
Also, it's not clear to me that having the very long list of tables is
actually that much better from a readability standpoint. I was wading
through the table, and from the standpoint of someone who didn't
originally write the code, it was ugly and painful to deal with. Having
a short list of tables of all of the synonmyous Timedia boards is in my
opinion much simpler to read.
- Ted
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