Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:



 JB>> yeah, it's like  C is three different languages,  C itself, the
 JB>> pre processor (# commands, macro0s) , and the makefile.

 RJT> I never had that much trouble with the preprocessor...

 RJT> Mostly that's just text substitution.

 JB> yeah, and simple if/else logic, mostly.

 JB> stuff like #() can be interesting...

Necessary,  sometimes.  Though I can't say that I remember when,  as it's
been quite a while since I actually *did* anything with it.

 RJT> Linux,  on the other hand...

 RJT> the HOWTO files this specific driver (aha1542 or aha154x) is 
 RJT> specified as you do need it,   or probing will fail.  Do I need
 RJT> it if I'm explicit on the command line?  Who knows

 JB> if it says autoprobe it probably will work without the bios if 
 JB> you're eplicit, if it says probing it may need to bios to see the
 JB> card at all. go with the the documentation for that module...
 JB> atleeast until you get it working.

What docs?  There weren't any,  except for the source,  which I couldn't
quite get a grip on.  Trial and error did it,  anyhow -- it would hang with
bios enabled,  works without...

 RJT> So I go toward the source,  thinking maybe there's an answer in
 RJT> there.  And I can't figure it out,  have *no* idea what they're
 RJT> doing with most of that code..

 RJT> It almost _is_ like a different language!

 JB> :) I did a little messing with kernel drivers way back (kernel 
 JB> 0.95) to get it to detect my internal modem... and yeah by all
 JB> appearances it's got more complex now.

Not just that,  but the whole style of what they're doing in there is
different than what I'm used to.  Coming at it from a different direction, 
I guess.  Probably it's the stuff I used to see under dos that was more of
an abberation,  and the stuff under cp/m most definitely a subset,  but it
still takes some getting used to.

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