> > Sure, but if you are patching anyway, it much better to fix that than
> > hack space.c :)
>
> Well, I remember asking Alan if he'd prefer it done that way, and not
> getting a reply back. So I didn't press further.
>
> The change to support __init/__exit in drivers/net is a no-brainer, and I
> did test it at the time -- it worked as expected. But it's really up to
> Alan to decide, I couldn't care less to be quite honest.
>
> In a way I think I understand why he's reluctant: it's very easy to end up
> changing the initialization order by mistake and messing up people's
> network setups.
Sorry, I was talking about a local patch not a global patch. If a user
must patch their 2.2 kernel to get the starfire driver working anyway,
then adding a change to do s/.a/.o/ on Makefiles would be simple.
That said, a 2.2.20 patch to s/.a/.o/ should not break anything at all.
All old drivers work as before through the static call chain. All newer
drivers using module_init/exit simply wind up being initialized after
all static initialization has occurred. With some subsystems this does
create a chicken-and-egg situation, but not for drivers/net...
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