[i2c] i2c driver naming in new style drivers

[David Brownell]

On Wednesday 12 December 2007, Jon Smirl wrote:
> What does the i2c group want to do about driver naming in new style
> i2c drivers? This is a general question.

It seems like the wrong question though, at least to me.

Driver names are Linux-specific and mostly match the name of the
source file.  Naming conventions differ by subsystem and platform,
with the hardest rule being that "modprobe the_name" shouldn't be
ambiguous.  They have nothing to do with I2C, new style or otherwise.

Wouldn't a better question be how to associate names of various
I2C *device types* (in some TBD namespaces) with drivers?


> Powerpc needs aliasing to work. i2c module names are set by an
> external committee and they don't agree with the Linux names.

I don't think you'll find anyone agreeing with you that Linux
module names should ever be set by an external committee, no
matter how it works.  Linux is relatively anti-committee.  ;)

But let's assume for the moment that there are some externally
assigned names that Linux needs to cope with in some cases.
(Maybe OF names, on OF platforms.)  That's easy enough, and your
patches show one way to achieve it.  But it has nothing at all
to do with driver naming.


> The question is, does i2c want to continue using the non-standard
> naming scheme from the old driver system in new style drivers.

I see no reason to change anything about driver naming conventions,
among other reasons because that's not the basic problem here.

- Dave