[alsa-devel] Moving sound/* to drivers/ ?

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 22 May 2008, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> 
> I am in favor of keeping /sound around with the
> non-hardware-dependent code, much like /block does with regard to
> /drivers/block.

I'd personally *much* rather have just one subdirectory.

I realize that block/ and drivers/block/ (and net/ vs drivers/net/) has 
come up several times as an example that isn't that way, BUT:

 - that's actually the odd man out. It's more common to do it the other 
   way (and examples have already been given: drivers/usb/core, just plain 
   drivers/base, drivers/scsi/ (where it's all mixed up and a lot of 
   low-level drivers are in subdirectories of their own), etc etc.

 - perhaps more importantly, it's totally different from 'sound' in that 
   the block/ and drivers/block/ maintainership is actually *separate*.

   The same is actually true of net/ and drivers/net/ too. It so happens 
   that within the last few months, drivers/net/ gets merged through the 
   same maintainer as net/, but they really end up being maintained 
   separately other than that.

So the block/ and net/ layers have very much a higher level of separation 
from their drivers. sound has always been very much _maintained_ as a 
block, even if it then internally may be separate pieces. Partly this is 
from historical reasons, I'm sure, but it's true none-the-less.

So from an outside view, having a single subdirectory makes sense, because 
that's how it has always been maintained.

So I'd personally much rather see just one drivers/sound/ than have this 
split up.

		Linus