RE: [net-next 8/9] ixgbe: add interface to export thermal data

On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 17:55 +0000, Waskiewicz Jr, Peter P wrote:

quoted

-----Original Message-----
From: Michał Mirosław [mailto:mirqus@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 3:51 PM
To: Skidmore, Donald C
Cc: Ben Hutchings; Kirsher, Jeffrey T; davem@davemloft.net;
netdev@vger.kernel.org; gospo@redhat.com; sassmann@redhat.com;
Waskiewicz Jr, Peter P
Subject: Re: [net-next 8/9] ixgbe: add interface to export thermal data

Drivers outside of drivers/hwmon just select HWMON in Kconfig. This adds a
3kB .c file to the kernel build for the first one that needs it.

This is where we run into issues though.  We can put this dependency in, but
customers don't pull upstream kernels, they rely on the OSV's to distribute
updates.  The customer doesn't want HWMON, and if their kernel doesn't ship
with HWMON support for ixgbe, then we're sunk.

So if !IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_HWMON), don't try to create an hwmon device,
but create the attributes anyway.

The point is what we're trying to implement, based on what our customers'
requirements are, is something completely different than what HWMON is
providing.  Trying to wedge HWMON onto this framework we're trying to
provide just overcomplicates the entire thing we're trying to provide.  It's
a generic interface to generic data in our drivers,

[...]

It sounds like you want to provide a "generic" ixgbe interface on
different operating systems.  But that is not a valid argument for an
in-tree driver.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings, Staff Engineer, Solarflare
Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job.
They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.