2.3.51 tulip broken

[David Ford]

Jeff Garzik wrote:

> Changes are easier to isolate with incremental changes.  One big update
> means things work, or they don't -- with the fallback (before the
> update) typically being a far inferior, and more buggy version of the
> software.

If the tulip driver was such a simple thing as a=b=c then that would work
nicely.  It's not.  One change for one chipset often breaks another chipset.
Most of the time it is subtle and sometimes it is undocumented.

The way Donald does changes is right IMO.  It's in a change constrained
environment and he has a much better grasp on the effects.  When he's happy with
a group of changes all getting settled neatly in place then out comes your big
patch...with the majority of cards working.  The current hack and slash done in
the kernel version fixes one and breaks another for each change and it takes
weeks of bitching to get it fixed again.

It's no wonder that tulip development has migrated almost solely to linux-tulip
because that's where all the working stuff and responsiveness is.

As it is now, the current tulip has been broken since 2.3.47 without any
understanding of why.  Honestly I would have figured my description of it being a
one shot link state would immediately trigger a how and why of the change that
broke it.

-d


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