Subject: Re: Splitting e1000 (Was: Re: e1000: backport ich9 support from 7.5.5 ?)

From: Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:56:59 -0400

Andrew Grover wrote:
> On 7/8/07, Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> * e1000 gets feedback
>> * Intel disappears for months
>> * Intel reappears with e1000 rewrite
> 
> * you ask them for another complete (simpler) rewrite
> 
>> * Intel fights tooth and nail when the driver is not accepted verboten
> 
> I don't think it must be as-is (i.e. replacing e1000 for all HW) but
> don't throw away all the work they've done in architecting the driver
> to cleanly handle multiple chip generations.
> 
> How about:
> 
> 1) Considering e1000new's current design, but for ICH9 only
> 2) test test test
> 3) Sometime in the future, considering incrementally moving previous
> PCIe generations' support from e1000 to e1000new (like I initially
> wanted, since that at least means there would be some technical reason
> for where the split occurs :-)

That plan would be fine...  as long as the e1000new driver internals 
were restructured as I've been describing.

If one arrives at a driver containing an internal API that is flexible 
enough to implement support for almost -any- NIC, then that's a sign 
that it needs to be organized in a different fashion.

	Jeff

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