[PATCH 1/5] net: mvberlin_eth: add an Ethernet driver for Marvell Berlin

[David Miller]

From: Antoine Tenart <antoine.tenart at free-electrons.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:50:59 +0200

> +struct rx_desc {
> +	u16 buf_size;		/* Buffer size				*/
> +	u16 byte_cnt;		/* Descriptor buffer byte count		*/
 ...
> +	u16 byte_cnt;		/* buffer byte count			*/
> +	u16 l4i_chk;		/* CPU provided TCP checksum		*/

I'm really suspcious that you're ordering these two members differently
than that used by the mv643xx_eth driver.

Looking at a diff of the two drivers, most of the transmit and recieve paths
are largely the same.

WRT. register differences, adding indirection to handle that is a no-brainer
because the cost of the register access itself will absolutely dwarf whatever
it costs to do an indirect call or whatever to implement the register access.

I really think you should look into sharing code more seriously.