From owner-freebsd-current Fri Dec 10 16:35:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from atlrel1.hp.com (atlrel1.hp.com [156.153.255.210]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E52141546C for ; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 16:35:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from darrylo@sr.hp.com) Received: from postal.sr.hp.com (postal.sr.hp.com [15.4.46.173]) by atlrel1.hp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCCC8A7AB; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 19:35:54 -0500 (EST) Received: from mina.sr.hp.com (root@mina.sr.hp.com [15.4.42.247]) by postal.sr.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17190)/8.7.3 TIS 5.0) id QAA22507; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 16:36:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (darrylo@mina.sr.hp.com [15.4.42.247]) by mina.sr.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17135)/8.7.3 TIS 5.0) id QAA13911; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 16:35:52 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199912110035.QAA13911@mina.sr.hp.com> To: Poul-Henning Kamp Cc: Kris Kennaway , Luoqi Chen , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired! Reply-To: Darryl Okahata In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 11 Dec 1999 00:55:15 +0100." <7881.944870115@critter.freebsd.dk> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 16:35:52 -0800 From: Darryl Okahata Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > Once we have established that the new driver doesn't leave a large > number of people stranded it will be killed for good. I think this is a key issue, if not *THE* key issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but PHK and others are basically saying: 1. If we allow the old drivers to exist, many people will not use the new drivers, and the new drivers will get little testing. 2. We, therefore, need to force people to use the new drivers by getting rid of the old ones. The concerns that other people have are: 1. "I'm worried about ATA. It was just called ``alpha-quality'' a few days ago, and now you want to promote it to something past ``beta-quality'', where, during a typical beta-test, both old and new drivers coexist. I'm worried about the stability of the ATA drivers." The timing is extremely unfortunate. Many people would have much fewer concerns (or "whining", as has been poorly said) if there were a "testing period" longer than a few days (where the ATA drivers are the default, but the old wd drivers still existed). 2. Functionality is currently missing. I hope I'm wrong, but the attitude seems to be: "If the ATA drivers are missing functionality, either fix it yourself or send hardware to the developers. If you can't fix it, you shouldn't be running -current". Well, this is fine to say, but I'd like to point out: * Many -current users have newer hardware, and tend to have fewer hardware that may not be supported by the new ATA drivers. Many -current users can afford to buy newer hardware (or do so because of business/consulting reasons). * I believe that many users of -release or -stable (who are not running -current and are not reading -current) tend to use older hardware -- the kind that may not be supported by the ATA drivers. The problem here is that we are potentially preventing users of older hardware from running 4.0-release/-stable when it comes out, because no one running -current has an example of their older hardware, and we removed the old drivers which may have worked. In other words, it's unclear as to whether or not the new driver will leave any significant number of people stranded, even if all -current developers test the h*ll out of ATA. -- Darryl Okahata darrylo@sr.hp.com DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Agilent Technologies, or of the little green men that have been following him all day. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message