Re: [RFC PATCH v3 linux-next] et131x: Promote staging et131x driver to drivers/net

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 12:45:30PM +0000, Mark Einon wrote:

This patch moves the et131x gigabit ethernet driver from drivers/staging
to drivers/net/ethernet/agere.

All the existing issues noted for this driver have been resolved, apart
from one performance issue where some fragmented packets suffer from
frame receive errors.

Signed-off-by: Mark Einon <mark.einon@gmail.com>
---

Changes from V2 - vendor name changed from Atheros to Agere in drivers/net/ethernet/agere/Kconfig

 MAINTAINERS                                        |   11 ++++---
 drivers/net/ethernet/Kconfig                       |    1 +
 drivers/net/ethernet/Makefile                      |    1 +
 drivers/net/ethernet/agere/Kconfig                 |   32 ++++++++++++++++++++
 .../et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/Makefile         |    1 +
 .../et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/et131x.c         |    0
 .../et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/et131x.h         |    0
 drivers/staging/Kconfig                            |    2 --
 drivers/staging/Makefile                           |    1 -
 drivers/staging/et131x/Kconfig                     |   10 ------
 drivers/staging/et131x/README                      |   16 ----------
 11 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 34 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/agere/Kconfig
 rename drivers/{staging/et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/Makefile (98%)
 rename drivers/{staging/et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/et131x.c (100%)
 rename drivers/{staging/et131x => net/ethernet/agere}/et131x.h (100%)
 delete mode 100644 drivers/staging/et131x/Kconfig
 delete mode 100644 drivers/staging/et131x/README

Creating a patch this way is the correct way to do it, however it gives
no clue to the network developers as to exactly what is in this driver
at the moment :(

I usually recommend just creating a new patch, that adds the driver to
the proper place in the kernel, and sending that in.  If the subsystem
maintainers accept it, then I can just delete the staging driver.

Yes, this looses the history of the code, but usually no one cares about
that for staging drivers.

If that's not ok, I have no problem accepting this, if I get an ack from
the subsystem maintainers that it's ok, but again, this patch makes it
pretty hard for them to know that or not.

thanks,

greg k-h