Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 17:16:04 -0500 From: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> To: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: wanton Atticizing is bad Message-ID: <19990102171604.A6231@netmonger.net> In-Reply-To: <199901021947.UAA25358@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>; from Luigi Rizzo on Sat, Jan 02, 1999 at 08:47:14PM %2B0100 References: <19990102143728.A23411@netmonger.net> <199901021947.UAA25358@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
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On Sat, Jan 02, 1999 at 08:47:14PM +0100, Luigi Rizzo wrote: > > In summary, please don't remove working drivers that have no > > replacement yet just because they're old. At least go through a > > release or two with a comment next to them saying "We need a > > maintainer for this or it may go away". Give it a chance. > > I can agree with your motivation, although i just want to comment that > it is my understanding that the SCSI drivers that have been > removed do not work after the move to CAM. That's correct, but it doesn't matter to the end user who simply knows that his hardware cannot be used if he upgrades. In the case of CAM, it was mostly unavoidable, and I don't disagree with the change. I mentioned it as an example of how it's difficult to explain such disappointing news to someone. > And for Voxware, the call for a maintainer has been on for a couple > of years or so. Amancio tried and i think he gave up long before > stopping being a committer, i tried and eventually went for writing > a new driver from scratch because it was much less work and pain > to maintain it. > > I have not seen any _serious_ offer to maintain Voxware in these > two years. That's not really the point. This is the point: sb0 at 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 on isa snd0: <SoundBlaster 16 4.16> sbxvi0 at drq 5 on isa snd0: <SoundBlaster 16 4.16> sbmidi0 at 0x330 on isa snd0: <SoundBlaster MPU-401> awe0 at 0x620 on isa awe0: <SoundBlaster EMU8000 MIDI (RAM512k)> It _works_. If it is removed, I (and MANY others) will have _less_ functionality. I will gladly join in with you in complaining about the evil Creative Labs and their unfriendly attitude, but that does not do anything to help the fact that these are very popular cards. I honestly do not know what the current status of your driver is on my AWE64, but last time I tried it, it didn't work as well with this card as the old Voxware stuff. I have no doubt that your design is better and that it will eventually lead to much better support, _but until then_, until it does not mean that many FreeBSD users would be out in the cold if it were released without, Voxware should be left in as an option. > (p.s. one of the victims of the purge was my transputer driver, and i > have to say probably nobody uses it now, so it was probably ok to > remove it -- at least it is less work to fix things when some kernel > interface changes or something similar) If really nobody uses it, then it doesn't matter. But if the kernel interface changes, it makes it a lot harder to pull out of Attic. I had similar problems making wd work with a compact flash pccard - I couldn't just take the baseline diffs between 2.2.5 and 2.2.5-PAO and apply them to the current wd, because too much had changed. It would have been a lot easier for the people who made interface changes to have made them to a driver with PCCARD support than it is to try to patch PCCARD support every time a change happens. (This specific example is moot, but the general problem is real.) -- Christopher Masto Director of Operations NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net http://www.netmonger.net "Good tools allow users to do stupid things." -- Clay Shirky To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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