Re: ataNG

[Kip Macy <kmacy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>     I am not opposed to it, *BUT* I have one requirement... that it be
>     brought in under a new device name and that we keep the existing ata
>     driver.
>
>     The reason is that while ATAng has new features, especially SATA support,
>     that our older driver does not, it also has a lot of problems (that have
>     been brought up on the freebsd-current lists), and it is also still
>     under some pretty serious development in -current and breakages are
>     likely to continue in the forseeable future.
>
>     So if you want to bring ATAng in give it a new name and a new major
>     device number.  We can add support for the device number in the boot
>     code so machines can boot into the new driver, and perhaps differentiate
>     the PCI ID's it recognizes to allow both drivers to be resident at
>     once (or, alternatively, only allow one or the other driver to be
>     linked into the kernel).
>
> 					-Matt
> 					Matthew Dillon
> 					<dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Your approach is quite prudent. I'm not one to advocate destabilizing
existing systems. Most of the breakage I've seen has been in atapicam
which wasn't entirely Soren's fault. This is an integral part of the
system so, before one even advocated its use, it would have to have
quite a bit of testing on a wide variety of hardware. I am almost all
SCSI in-house. The only person I know of at the moment with the resources
to do the testing is Dave Rhodus, so it would largely be contingent on
his interest.


				-Kip