Code removal - Was Re: Future of the ie(4) driver

[Gary Palmer]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 12:45:51AM +0200, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> John Baldwin wrote:
> > The ie(4) driver in 7.x has several issues.  First of all, it has several 
> > compiler warnings that haven't been successfully fixed in several years and 
> > are currently just ignored.  More importantly, it hasn't been updated to use 
> > more modern FreeBSD APIs like bus_space (still uses inb/outb) and SMPng 
> > locking.  If someone is using this driver and is willing to test fixes for 
> > it, then it can be updated.  If there isn't anyone who is using this driver 
> > and willing to test fixes, then it will be removed from the tree at some 
> > point in the future (say a month or two).
> 
> I reduced "cc: stable at freebsd.org, current at freebsd.org" to current@
> & changed "Subject:" so as not to cross post this tangential reply.
>   ( BTW I checked, I don't have any hardware that uses "ie" )
> 
> What's concerned me increasingly for some time, (& nothing personal
> to any individual, (the above just a useful illustration ) is a
> tendency in FreeBSD for developers to say:
> 	~Unless anyone speaks in [time] I will discard [whatever]~
> Then months later a new release is rolled, & months later users upgrade, &:
> 	"Oh my god! they removed the XYZ I use ! ... Aargh!~

The code for XYZ is in the attic, it isn't gone.  It can be resurrected if
a developer has interest/time and access to relevant development systems. 
Often the developer resource is more limited than the hardware.  Locking
a device driver is often non trivial and not many people know how to do it
(correctly), for example.  People often forget that we are a volunteer
project and that means that although people want <x> to happen, it might
not unless someone is willing to step forward and dedicate the time to
actually doing it.

Probably a better place to put notice is in the release notes.  If someone
upgrades (or tries to) without reading the release notes and/or without
keeping up with the relevant lists, then I'm not sure there is anything
else we can do.

If you want an example of what a non-developer can do to address issues
they were having, look at Marc Fournier's work on wine.  To the best
of my knowledge (and no offense ment to Marc) he is not a programmer,
but he has ganged together people with knowledge and interest to get
wine working better on FreeBSD.  Thats probably a better way of 
addressing these issues than trying to notify a significant part
of our userbase pre-emptively of a change that may or may not affect
them.

Marc also did work on bsdstats (http://www.bsdstats.org/).  If you
want to push for older devices to be supported, it might be worthwhile
encouraging people to register their systems in bsdstats, especially
if they have hardware that is not currently shipping in new products.
(bsdstats shows no entry at all for ie(4) under the FreeBSD ethernet
section)

It might also be worthwhile either extending bsdstats or developing
a parallel system where people with hardware that they want to
continue to be supported can register as saying "I'm willing to help
keep <x> supported" so that instead of blindly guessing at which
mailing list might get interest for a device, there is a single place
where people can be contacted.  Keeping that data current might be
troublesome and I have no idea how well it would work in practice.