Re: [RFC] Wireless extensions rethink

[Jean Tourrilhes <jt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 02:23:01PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> >
> >     As a matter of fact, I tried the strongly type approach you
> >advocate and find its kernel overhead not acceptable. Note that people
> >not using wireless have to suffer from this bloat, and wireless
> >extensions are used in embeeded platforms such as OpenAP, iPaq and
> >Zaurus where footprint matters.
> 
> As you can see from the patch and header I have attached, there is 
> _zero_ change to storage.  No additional bloat.

        I've never talked of driver bloat, which I don't really care
about. I'm talking of *kernel* bloat. And not about storage bloat, but
code bloat.
        When I designed the API, I did verify this carefully :
        http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100829443600986&w=2

> Sorry, keeping compatibility with drivers outside the kernel is _not_ a 
> priority here.  Backward compatibility is how this cruft accumulated in 
> the first place.
> 
> Go ahead and assume that drivers outside the kernel will break.  This is 
> no different from vendor drivers -- if the driver is not in the kernel, 
> it doesn't exist.

        Jeff, this is not the way I work. For example, there are good
reasons why the Atheros driver is outside the kernel.

>       Jeff

        Jean