Messages in this thread | | | Subject | RE: [PATCH][RFC] Remove support for the orphaned, obsolete Digi EPCA driver. | Date | Mon, 2 Jul 2007 09:56:50 -0500 | From | "Kilau, Scott" <> |
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Hi all,
> Last time I poked at the tools they were working under 2.6 with some > trivial compile fixes. Ideally this driver would be trimmed > to ISA only > and the newer dgrs drivers merged but latter half appears to > be something > digi have no interest in
I would be very surprised if anyone uses/could use the existing "epca" drivers in the kernel.
As Robert has noticed, they would *not* work out-of-the-box, and would require tweaking in the userspace utils as well as the kernel code as well.
We here at Digi would love to see the "epca" driver go away from the kernel sources and replace it with our new "dgap" open source driver, but I can understand where you are coming from Alan.
As for merging the new Digi driver (dgap) source code that actually work under 2.6 kernel, I attempted that a few years ago...
It did not go well, which I know and understand is expected for merging ANY new driver into the kernel.
However, it was discovered during that time, there are fundamental things/changes required to the driver that would end up crippling our driver in the "usability" department.
(Probably the biggest obstacle, was the extra ioctls to manage "Digi" specific things, and other hooks that are simply not permitted in in-kernel code)
Trust me, I *know* the pain of keeping the driver out-of-tree with the constant flux in the kernel API, and I understand that most people here say its completely self-inflicted...
But massively crippling the driver from a usability POV, just simply isn't an option.
Thus, I have to keep the driver, open source, but out-of-tree, and take the lumps of the constantly changing kernel API as they are dished out.
Scott Kilau Digi International - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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