It doesn't really help clarity or brevity.

The nb_dev field is not needed.
Most uses are the test if it is zero or not, and they can be replaced
by tests on the emptiness of the disks list.

Other uses are for iterating through devices in numerical order and
it makes the code clearer (IMO) to unroll the devices into an array first
(which has to be done at some stage anyway) and then walk that array.

This makes ITERATE_RDEV_ORDERED un-necessary.

Also remove the "name" field which is never used.

Discard functions that have been "not yet" for a long time

It is not clear what these should do, or if they will ever be
needed, so let's clean them out.  They can easily be recreated
if there is a need.

As we now have per-device queues, we don't need a common make_request
function that dispatches, we can dispatch directly.

Each *_make_request function is changed to take a request_queue_t
from which it extract the mddev that it needs, and to deduce the
"rw" flag directly from the bio.

It currently has several lines of code where one will do.

It isn't needed.  Only the chunksize is used, and it
can be found in the superblock.

Several awkard constructs could be replaced by
list_del_init, list_for_each or list_empty.

Also two bugs fixes:
 free_device_names was freeing the wrong thing
 same_set wasn't initialised.

..as it is nolonger used.

We embed a request_queue_t in the mddev structure and so
have a separate one for each mddev.
This is used for plugging (in raid5).

Given this embeded request_queue_t, md_make_request no-longer
needs to make from device number to mddev, but can map from
the queue to the mddev instead.

md: "dev" isn't defined any more.
raid5: must report on "bi" before reusing the variable
raid5: buffer_head should be bio (not a debugging thing)

Attached patch brings over the sane bits from 2.4-ac: i.e. if Linus
merges this and Alan merges your patch minus my complaints, the two
trees will be in sync...

 - Finally unify task_in_intr and task_mulin_intr. One crucial code path less to
   watch out, but a quite dangerous step in itself. PIO reading is functional
   again. The next step will be the unification of the write path of course.

 - Introduce a small helper for the execution of task file commands which
   basically just send a simple command down to the drive.

 - Add a buffer parameter to ide_raw_taskfile allowing to unify the handling of
   ioctl and normal ide_raw_taskfile request.

 - Fix some small function pointer type mismatches.

Apply more host chip controller clenups by Bartlomiej:

     - move setting drive->current_speed from *_tune_chipset()
       to ide_config_drive_speed()

    cmd64x.c:
	- convert cmd64x_tuneproc() to use ata-timing library
	- clean cmd64x_tune_chipset() and cmd680_tune_chipset()

    hpt366.c:
	- remove empty timings table

    it8172.c:
	- kill prototypes
	- update to new udma_setup() scheme

    - misc cleanups

  Set up CardBus cards correctly: initialize them fully
  before calling device_register(), and make sure to tell
  the world that it's a PCI-like bus.

This kills Sysrq-D support (did not work anyway, and complicated
code).

Adds resume support to i8259A (otherwise interrupts will not work
after S3).

HAVE_NEW_DEVICE_MODEL is always true in 2.5, so we should define
it. S3 can't work properly without that. Also limit toshiba workaround
to S1. (This hide lack of i8259A support for me).

Fixes compilation, and kills <asm/suspend.h> being included
twice with ugly hacks around.

- (leak) memory allocated in dscc4_found1() isn't freed by caller in error path.
  dscc4_free1() is now in charge of this duty.
- (style) code factored in dscc4_remove_one after use of dscc4_free1().

- (compilation fix) plain old typo in struct member naming.

- (compilation fix) missing init.h include;
- (compilation fix) multiple pointers can't be set to NULL in one line if their
  type differ.

Courtesy of Kevin Curtis <kevin.curtis@farsite.co.uk>, posted
on l-k the 2002/04/15.

Description
- (compilation fix) removal of deprecated fields in net_device;
- (bug) early pci_enable_device.

Below a patch removing the list of sense codes from usb/storage/debug.h
since the same list is already found in scsi/constants.c.
This also brings this list up to date with SCSI-3.

The patch below cleans up some SCSI stuff.

The main purpose is to avoid trying to read the partition table
of a removable disk when the drive has told us that no media
are present. (Right now we try to read a 4K block and fail and
retry and fail, and give an I/O error on the first sector,
then try to read the second sector and fail and retry ...)

Unused fields  sector_bit_size  and  sector_bit_shift  in
struct scsi_disk were removed. The field  has_part_table
(that has nothing to do with partition tables) was
renamed to  has_been_registered . The field  ready  was
renamed to  media_present .
The overly long  sd_init_onedisk()  was split up.

When we notice that no media are present anymore, the
partitions are removed from /proc/partitions, but the
drive remains, with size 0.

A future patch will remove the field  capacity  - there are
all too many places where capacities are stored - but the
present patch is large enough already.

There is also a quite independent patch in scsi_error.c
(yesterday someone had an infinite loop retrying to read
bad media) - this patch honours the SCpnt->retries.
In case you applied this already, just ignore the scsi_error.c part.

Also some "Overrides for Emacs" were removed.

into home.transmeta.com:/home/torvalds/v2.5/linux

into home.transmeta.com:/home/torvalds/v2.5/linux

into home.transmeta.com:/home/torvalds/v2.5/linux

into home.transmeta.com:/home/torvalds/v2.5/linux

	- remove call to check_region 
	- check the result of request_region
	- call release_region if something goes wrong afterwards during driver initialisation.

I don't have this hardware so I can't verify if it works (compilation checked only).  

[janitor] update the atarilance Ethernet driver for VME Lance cards on the Atari to check the result of request_irq and exit in case of error.

Patch is also available at the following URL
        http://www.chez.com/wstinson/linux/kernel/patch-net-atari

I don't have this hardware to check for myself

	1) check the status of call to request_region 
	2) and return an error in case of problem.

I don't have this hardware so compilation checked only.

[janitor] update the comx-hw-comx wan driver to remove call to check_region and check the status of call to 
request_region instead.

I don't have this hardware so compilation checked only. 

        1) check the status of call to request_region 
        2) and return an error and release the interrupt held in case of problem.

(In my first attempted patch for this driver I had forgotten to release the interrupt.)

I don't have this hardware so compilation checked only.

to 
	1) check result of calls to request_region and handle failure to allocate region resource
	2) add and use an extra label "Failure1" which frees the region resource
	in case of device driver initialisation error later on
       
I don't have this hardware so changes not tested. 

        1) check the status of call to request_region 
        2) and return an error in case of problem.

Note that a call to check_region still remains in this driver (in subroutine check_s508_conflicts). 

I don't have this hardware so compilation checked only.

        1) remove call to check_region and use request_region instead checking the return value 
        2) release region resource in case of driver initialisation error

I don't have this hardware so compilation checked only.

        1) remove call to check_region 
        2) check the status of call to request_region 
        3) and return an error in case of problem.