Re: Driver graveyard

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 08:29:03AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org> writes:
> 
> > Hi!
> >
> > Thomas suggested that it may be nice to create some form of a record
> > for drivers which were retired from the tree. I think a code-centric
> > equivalent of CREDITS could be a good idea.
> >
> > Does such a record already exist somewhere? If not any thoughts on
> > creating a file storing (Kconfig, short description, commit which
> > removed the driver)? E.g.
> >
> >
> > K: DMASCC
> > D: Hamradio high-speed (DMA) SCC driver for AX.25. Driver supported
> > D: Ottawa PI/PI2, Paccomm/Gracilis D: PackeTwin, and S5SCC/DMA boards.
> > C: 865e2eb08f51
> 
> So what is the purpose for this file?  And more to the point, I guess:
> is there a need for it to be strictly machine-readable?  If the
> objective is to remember our history to minimize our chances of
> repeating it, something more prose-oriented might work better.

I can imagine it being potentially useful if someone wants to resurect a
driver, that file would be easier to search than the git history, but
maybe web search engines will keep linking to older kernel sources for
long enough.

On a side note, navigating removals is something git doesn't make easy:
git blame will tell when a line has been added (or modified), but
figuring out when a line has been removed is more difficult. Or is it
one of git's features that I simply don't know about ?

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart