User asks: can we decouple device vendor IDs from drivers?

[Mark Murray]

"M. Warner Losh" writes:
> The problem with decoupling things entirely from the drivers is that
> many drivers will say "if I have this revision of that card, do this
> workaround." or "if I'm this or newer, I have this feature" both of
> which are broken by the kernel forcing the driver to service a given
> hunk of hardware.

Hmm. Careful design may sort this out, methinks. If the file (which
sounds analagous to /boot/device.hints to me) turned devid's into
generic griver requrements (DEVID(0x04589045) == driver(foo) revision(bar)
flags(baz, qux)) would that not be usable? (/me wonders if he has the time
to do this - he's certainly interested)

>                    The other down side is that when you bork the alias
> file on solaris, you are so hozed.

... like most of the files in /boot/...

> However, it would make the dynamic loading of drivers easier.  

I really like to concept of configuring things with vi(1), instead of
with gcc :-)

M
--
Mark Murray
iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH