Garrett D'Amore writes: > > If we could distinguish in the man page between features that may exist > > in the chip, but may not be supported in the driver (a design decision), > > it would help to set user expectations correctly -- and avoid needless > > confusion (and customer calls). > > > > Yes, but this isn't architectural. This sounds like a potential docs > req't, and should be coordinated with the docs folks, IMO.
The bounds of 'system architecture' can be fairly flexible, and can certainly extend to hardware interfaces. The idea that a driver may not provide access to all of the features of the underlying hardware does sound to me like a potential architectural limitation for the system as a whole. (It's analogous to having a middleware wrapper that obscures features in the underlying system -- that's architectural, too.) As a best practice item, and since we're potentially already recommending things here that are arguably beneath the level of architecture, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that if you're doing anything unusual, you should document it, and that (among the many "unusual" things you might do) failing to support the features in the hardware (or simply deciding not to) is something that needs to be disclosed clearly in the customer-visible documentation. Similarly, failing to support the features that are "common" in drivers of the same ilk is a good thing to document. For example, an Ethernet driver that can't do VLANs stands out, and needs a note. > kinds of versioning information would be hard to express universally, I > think. At least with our current DDI. If you want to enhance the DDI > for that, we'd need a specific proposal. In any case, its out of scope > for this Best Practices proposal (at least unless the DDI were enhanced > to express that information.) Agreed; it's really a packaging issue. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
