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Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 15:01:16 +0200
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From: Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>
To: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com>
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Cc: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>,
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	<ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org>,
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Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] Topic: Removal of code that is still in use
 by users but there is a better code.
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On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 12:36 AM, James Bottomley
<James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-06-11 at 15:26 -0700, Roland Dreier wrote:

>> Every time a developer wants to change a core API, that developer
>> needs to patch every driver that uses the API.  Every old, unused,
>> bitrotten driver we have in the tree is 100% wasted work, and often a
>> substantial amount of work because it's really hard even to understand
>> how those drivers are (mis)using the API being changed.
>
> Well how often do we do that?  It's not like it's the most common
> activity.

Well I'm doing that right now in the GPIO subsystem where I'm
refactoring all local irqchip implementations into the gpiolib.

So I attack-patch all suitable refactoring targets, indeed. And
sometimes the answer comes back "I don't have that hardware
anymore, cannot test it", even from the person listed as maintainer.
(drivers/gpio/gpio-adnp.c, drivers/pinctrl/spear/*)

And then I get a strong urge to delete it, because a maintainer that
can't maintain is not much of a maintainer...

Yours,
Linus Walleij