IDE development moves forward [LWN.net]

The direction of Linux IDE development - now that most of the work previously done for 2.5 had been thrown out - is becoming a little clearer. Andre Hedrick has posted a 2.5 IDE patch, his first in many months. Along with the patch, Andre states:

We are back. We is a development team being composed to reduce my load and import fresh ideas. If you wnat to help please join in, we can make the halloween party.

The initial 2.5 patch consists mostly of relatively small cleanups, but Andre tells us that much more ambitious changes are in the works.

Actually, much of the relevant work has already been done for the 2.4 (or 2.4-ac) series, and the rest, should Alan Cox and Marcelo Tosatti be willing, should go in soon. This work includes complete support for memory mapped ATA controllers, which is a precondition for serial ATA support (which is also on the list); fixes for a number of Promise controller issues; support for split-channel operations; and a tagged command queueing implementation which, says Andre, avoids some potential problems found in Jens Axboe's version. Additional work envisioned for 2.5 includes a standardization of the ATAPI layer and automatic loading of subdrivers.

The auto-loading feature is aimed at the classic CD burner problem: regular tasks are handled as standard ATAPI operations, but burning a disk requires loading the IDE-SCSI module. Andre's plan is to have the IDE layer select the appropriate subdriver based on which device the user-space application opened, making this switch be automatic and transparent.

That, of course, is a long list of changes to get into the kernel in less than two months. To that end, Andre has recruited help from a number of directions. Alexander Viro is "the BUZZIT guy" helping to improve code quality, as well as continuing his work on things like partition table handling. Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz has his hands in the code, as do a number of other people. And all the changes, of course, must pass Alan Cox's inspection on their way into the 2.4-ac tree. Alan has already demonstrated that he will not take IDE patches that don't pass muster, and Andre seems to be doing his best to rework the patches accordingly.

Things, thus, seem to be off to an encouraging start. The list remains long, however, and the deadline is close. And Linus hasn't looked at the code yet. The IDE work is going to have to proceed quickly to get that halloween treat.

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