Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] x86: create drivers/x86/ from drivers/misc/

From: Randy Dunlap <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:00:00 -0800

Len Brown wrote:
> 
>>> Move x86 platform specific drivers from drivers/misc/
>>> to a new home under drivers/x86/.
>>>
>>> The community has been maintaining x86 platform specific drivers
>>> under /drivers/misc/ for a few years.  The oldest ones started
>>> life under drivers/acpi, but got booted out because they are
>>> generally vendor-specific extensions to ACPI, or simply
>>> users of ACPI, rather than implementers of the ACPI spec.
>>>
>>> The thing that they have in common is that they are
>>> x86 vendor specific platform drivers.  So when asked,
>>> Linus suggested we move them to drivers/x86.
>> We already have 81 one directory entries under drivers/
>> and with patch you open up for an additional
>> directory for each arch - not elegant.
> 
> I followed the example of drivers/s390/,
> per Linus' suggestion.
> 
> The other place that seemed to suggest itself was
> arch/x86/drivers/, as we already have:
> 
> arch/um/drivers/
> arch/sh/drivers/
> arch/cris/*/drivers/
> 
>> As it is today (before this patch) the directories unider
>> drivers/ said what the drivers was used for - which is logical.
>>
>> But with this new arch specific directory it is no longer obvious
>> is a driver should be located under say drivers/net/* or
>> drivers/arm/* in case it is a arm specific driver.
> 
> These are vendor-specific, aka "platform specific" drivers
> for various x86 platforms.
> 
>> What is wrong with the current location under misc/*?
> 
> mostly that it "misc" means nothing at all...
> Indeed, misc should probably be deleted for this reason...

Yes, IIRC, we had eliminated drivers/misc/ at one point,
and then it came back on us.

~Randy