Subject: kill arch/arm/drivers/char1

From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 13:13:18 +0100

I've just noticed that there are still many character devices missing on ARM 
systems.  Rather than try to apply ever more band-aids to the arch/arm/drivers 
stuff to fix this up, I thought I'd see what would be involved in actually 
getting rid of the char1 directory for good.

Most of the files in here are symlinks now.  Out of those that aren't, 
quite a lot are Acorn-specific and can move to drivers/acorn/char.  These 
include defkeymap-acorn.c, keyb_arc.c, keyb_ps2.c and mouse_rpc.c.  The 
changes in serial.c seem benign enough that they can probably be applied to 
the generic version without too much trouble.

This leaves keyboard.c and console.c.  Both of these have scary-looking 
console related changes in and I don't know what the state of play is with 
them.  But it seems to me that even if they can't be reconciled with the 
generic versions at the moment, we could tuck them away in some hidden place 
(maybe even leave them where they are now) and drag them out with Makefile 
rules rather than having a completely separate directory tree with its own 
versions of config.in and Makefile.

What do you think?

p.

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From: Russell King - ARM Linux Admin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 23:51:02 +0000 (GMT)

> getting rid of the char1 directory for good.

Unfortunately, the purpose behind this directory seems to have been forgotten -
it was put there as a test directory /for me/, but people seem to have adopted
it as their own.  It was there to allow me to evaluate the (not so good) fb
video drivers against my console driver.

I am still of the opinion that my console driver delivers better console
performance on the Acorn machines, but I decided to leave this directory there
until I managed to get this lot sorted out.

The last thing that I want to happen is for this directory to disappear, since
then I loose my testbed.

However, if someone wants to integrate this stuff into a better location, they
can always work /with/ me to do this in such a way that it is acceptable to
everyone, rather than just submitting a patch which does a major restructure
and kills this directory.

I think that some people seem to forget that the source for the patches is
my development tree, which does from time to time have bits tacked on to it.
Although it is representative of a working kernel tree, these bits normally
tack on the side and replace other bits.

This means, for example, if you find a program in my patch which tests some
particular part of the kernel, don't send me a patch to remove it.  The same
goes for marked test/development directories.

> the generic version without too much trouble.

The serial.c changes aren't when they introduce bugs.

> versions of config.in and Makefile.

Well, seeing as I plan to (at some point) do some more major changes in that
area, it would not be a good idea to touch this at the moment.  
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |        Russell King       [email-masked]      --- ---
  | | | |  http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/~rmk/armlinux.html    /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |                                                     ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |
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From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 09:58:17 +0100

>The last thing that I want to happen is for this directory to disappear, since

No you don't.  You still get to keep your console code in arch/arm/drivers/
char and the fb-based one is still there -- it's just moved around a little so 
there's less duplication.  No functionality at all is lost.

>everyone,

OK; so how would you like to see it changed?

>goes for marked test/development directories.

I have no problem with you having your own development directories in there. 
But the way things are arranged now, people who want to use the fbcon code 
have no choice but to use this "test/development" directory.

If you like, you can leave out the bits of the patch I sent that actually 
delete files from arch/arm/drivers/char1 and then you can keep your sandbox as 
well but not force others to use it.

>The serial.c changes aren't when they introduce bugs.

Which bugs do they introduce?

p.