Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 21:46:34 -0500 From: Greg Lehey <grog@mojave.sitaranetworks.com> To: Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>, Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> Cc: Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG, johnh@sitaranetworks.com Subject: Progress or procedure? (was: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired!) Message-ID: <19991208214634.48366@mojave.sitaranetworks.com> In-Reply-To: <199912082131.WAA31612@freebsd.dk>; from Soren Schmidt on Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 10:31:22PM %2B0100 References: <19991208150807.A16687@netmonger.net> <199912082131.WAA31612@freebsd.dk>
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On Wednesday, 8 December 1999 at 22:31:22 +0100, Soren Schmidt wrote: > It seems Christopher Masto wrote: >> On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 10:56:24AM -0800, Mike Smith wrote: >>>> You shouldn't remove a function until it has been properly replaced. >>>> A very simple concept some people seem to have trouble grasping. >>> >>> Actually, that's not at all correct. We've demonstrated a number of >>> times now that you reach a point where a brutal cutover is required. >>> Failure to do so leaves people clutching the old security blanket for >>> years, and massively impedes further development. >> >> Unfortunately, FreeBSD has far too many examples of a working system >> being replaced with a less functional system. Just off the top of my >> head, there were the SCSI drivers lost to CAM, the PCCARD system, >> sound drivers, and now ATA. > > Hmm, well, if you want support for any of the new ata-66 controllers > you have to use the ata driver, so you loose some you win some. > Given that my patch for the SiS works and a patch I got from Luoqi, > the ONLY support you are loosing is the Cyrix. If we maintain wd for the Cyrix people, we don't lose anything. >> Right now, I have no sound (not detected), no USB (panic on removal), >> can't use my sio pccard, can't eject my ed pccard, my IDE drives are >> taking hours to dump and fsck, and my TV card is missing every other >> line if I try to use the (not working anyway) closed caption decoder. >> >> Now, I running -current on this machine, I've asked for problems, and >> I have them. I try to fix them and/or send decent bug reports when I >> can, and I don't piss and moan when something breaks, because it's >> -current. I just get a feeling sometimes like we're moving forward on >> a treadmill that's moving backward just slightly faster. > > Well, progress doesn't come for free you know, somebody has to do > the hard work of actually implementing things. So if you think its > going too slowly, do something about it, help out where you can, but > complaining isn't helping anybody :) We're not talking progress here, we're talking procedure. Nobody doubts that the new driver will be better than the old one, and nobody doubts that the new one should be the default (at least, I haven't seen anybody doubting it). But why throw away functionality? People need time to adapt, and we have a perfectly good solution: keep the wd driver for 4.0, make it clear it's deprecated, and remove it (functionality permitting) for 4.1. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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