Hi all, Al and Peter have asked me to allow the individual usb-serial drivers to become separate loadable modules (like the other usb drivers with the added need for the usb-serial core module to also be loaded.) To do this would only require a small change to the usb-serial code (as the drivers are currently statically linked into a table, that would just change to a dynamic list.) Here's the pros and cons of this as I see it: Pros: - enable vendors to provide usb to serial drivers outside of the kernel source tree easier (Digi would like this, as it enables them to update their drivers to their customers easier, and their drivers are GPLed.) - reduce the memory size of the kernel footprint if you are only going to use a device that requires a firmware download every once in a while, but are going to use your Visor all the time. Cons: - enables vendors to provide usb to serial drivers outside of the kernel source tree easier (I know, this is also in the pro list, but this change would allow vendors to ship binary drivers that play nice with with the usb-serial major:minor numbers as they really can't do this today very easily.) - requires users to load yet another module to support their device (to use the visor would require both usb-serial.o and visor.o to be loaded, although this can be taken care of by the modutils package easily.) Does anyone else have any comments / criticisms of this proposed change? I'm currently moving this week, so I will not be able to make this modification until later in the week, but I wanted to ask the group if there were any objections before I did this. thanks, greg k-h greg@(kroah|wirex).com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
