Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 5 Jun 1999 09:41:34 -0700 | From | David Hinds <> | Subject | Re: 2.3 wish: integrate pcmcia into mainstream kernel |
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On Thu, Jun 03, 1999 at 11:59:05PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> We want to rewrite more things than only pcmcia. Current modules > system has problem: if driver is in kernel, one driver handles two > devices. HOWEVER if driver is module, two drivers are required for two > devices.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you've got several builtin devices of the same type, can't most drivers probe for multiple cards, even when loaded as modules? PCMCIA modules don't have this issue because probing is uncoupled from module loading.
> Parameter passing is very different in modular / nonmodular versions. > > This should be unified.
Agreed. I think this is one of the major barriers for putting all of PCMCIA in the kernel. It is an unpleasant fact that a moderate fraction of laptops require special parameters for PCMCIA to work, and the kernel boot parameter system is fairly lame. A few kernel drivers do more sophisticated parsing on their own, effectively making modular/nonmodular options the same, but this should really just be done in one centralized place. And I liked the suggestion someone made about using special ELF sections to handle module init/cleanup, so that the same object files could be used for modular and linked-in drivers. I made up my own system to do it a couple years ago, but it was not so nice.
-- Dave
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