: > Ideally, there should be no more unnecessary divergence of the APIs--it
: > would also be nice to work toward removing any API differences that there
: > are now (no matter where they came from, what discussions have taken place,
:
:Tell that to the people who gratuitously change APIs when integrating
:them into another system.
:
:(Read: "I've given up on that since the bus_dma incident.")
:
:        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>

    It's not really possible to avoid divergence.  Major features such as
    SMP, AIO, newbus, and so forth cannot be implemented efficiently using
    the old APIs.  The old APIs simply were never designed with many of
    these new features in mind.

    I think it is possible to implement a generic API for device driver
    portability, as long as the generic API is reasonably well throught 
    out and widely adopted.  Intel and others are attempting to do this.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>