From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6041DFBF for ; Wed, 5 Sep 2018 14:03:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx1.suse.de (mx2.suse.de [195.135.220.15]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id DDDC37AF for ; Wed, 5 Sep 2018 14:03:52 +0000 (UTC) Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 16:03:50 +0200 Message-ID: From: Takashi Iwai To: Dan Carpenter In-Reply-To: <20180905135528.ase6evcv7rlwufyr@mwanda> References: <20180905135528.ase6evcv7rlwufyr@mwanda> MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by SEMI 1.14.6 - "Maruoka") Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Cc: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] How can we treat staging drivers better? List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 15:55:28 +0200, Dan Carpenter wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 05, 2018 at 03:35:53PM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote: > > The staging driver is a wonderful process to promote the downstream > > code to the upstream, but I have doubt whether it's working really as > > expected for now. > > > > - Often the drivers live forever in staging although they should have > > been moved to the upper, properly maintained, subsystems. > > The only one that comes to mind is comedi. I think those guys know that > everyone is fine with them moving the code. > > Do you have another example? Well, not forever, but many codes remain there for many cycles, I thought. But I haven't counted and no statistics, so it might be my false impression. > > - Code changes in staging are mostly only scratching surfaces, minor > > code style cleanups, etc, what checkpatch suggests. > > That's probably true for the wireless drivers because converting them > to use mac80211 is complicated. The other drivers seem to be doing > better. So which drivers were the good examples? Maybe we can learn from them. > > - There are little communications with the corresponding subsystem; > > already a few times I was surprised by casually finding a staging > > driver code by grepping for preparing API changes. > > Which ones are you interested in? My primary interest is the sound stuff. > I'd always prefer to hand off staging > drivers to an existing subsystem but it's not always clear who that > should be. IMO, *that* is the problem -- no proper taker in the subsystem. thanks, Takashi