On Jul 8, 2007, at 1:14 PM, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

quoted

I reject the notion that a "flag day" switchover for a huge mass of
e1000 users is the correct path.  I do not think that best serves  
Linux
users.

so the options we have is do it one pci id a time; and the suggestion
by others like Christoph has been to make the split at the PCI Express
switchover. Do you agree with that approach?

My preference, as someone who has to support pretty much all  
generations of e1000-supported hardware in the field running critical  
applications is for a single well-structured driver. Qualifying a new  
release of the driver is a big deal, and having to qualify two of  
them doesn't really appeal to me.

We're seeing at least a couple of generations of mainboard that will  
have both PCIe and PCI-X slots (and adapters) in them, so even in the  
same box a PCIe split would require us to use both drivers. If  
splitting the driver really makes for substantial simplification of  
both, I suppose that's a compensating benefit, but it's not purely  
beneficial.

The e1000 driver (and the team behind it) has been a blessing to our  
business. Whatever they're doing right, I'd like to see them keep  
doing it.