Mark McLoughlin wrote:

quoted

I disagree, we should not break the current e1000 driver in 

the kernel while 

quoted

there is a new driver coming up that introduces ich9 support 

without breaking 

quoted

(the old e1000) support for all other devices. This is why 

we want to drop a new 

quoted

version of the e1000 driver upstream instead, and put all 

newer devices in that 

quoted

driver.

Clearly some major changes are happening around e1000, 
but the point
I'm making is that ich9 support, in particular, doesn't need to be held
hostage to these longer term changes. I think the backport shows that:

There seems to be a lot of concern over obsoleting the e1000 driver
too quickly, and with confusing users (and startup scripts) about which
driver to load.

Obviously, we at Intel want to get e1000new into the kernel as quickly
as possible, and to obsolete e1000 also as quickly as possible.  The
point of this exercise is to reduce our support and maintenance burden,
and e1000new has shown itself internally to be much easier to work on.

So how about this:
- We include e1000new in 2.6.23, along side e1000.  We expose ICH9
  device IDs in e1000new, and gate the rest of the IDs inside
  #ifndef CONFIG_E1000.  This gives distis ICH9 support, along
  with a guarantee of the known e1000 driver.  It also lets the more
  bleeding-edge people turn off e1000 and run with just e1000new to
  work out any kinks.
- For 2.6.24, we reverse the situation:  Gate all device IDs in e1000
  behind #ifndef CONFIG_E1000NEW, and expose all of them in e1000new.
  At this point we (i.e. the community, not just Intel) should be 
  confident in e1000new, and we can mark e1000 as obsolete.  It's still
  a fallback option for those with old/funky/misconfigured hardware.
- After a year (or whatever), we remove e1000.

Seems to me that this plan should appease either everybody or nobody.
We get ICH9 support out there, e1000new gets in the kernel and
exercised,
and we get to set a definite date for obsoleting e1000.

-Mitch

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