Re: [PATCH 09/13] mac80211: remove hw_scan callback

[Jiri Benc <jbenc@suse.cz>]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:56:33 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
> My point is that things are not black and white.  It's not fullmac vs.
> softmac, there's a spectrum of parts in between.  I'm not advocating
> making mac80211 work with every part under the sun, but it seems that
> we're not being open enough to functionality that might be in hardware.
> Holding a 100% software line with mac80211 is just IMHO wrong and
> short-sighted.  The stack needs to be flexible WRT to the hardware
> capabilities of the parts that we expect to use it.  Saying no to
> hardware scanning just because it can also be done in software too is
> wrong.

Agreed.

> We're not trying to limit the capabilities of hardware artificially, but
> at the same time we're not going to allow crackpot hardware stuff to
> clutter up the stack.  Hardware scan is far from crackpot hardware
> stuff; it's a simple, discrete function that shouldn't be hard work
> with.  It's already in, right?  Ripping it out for a 100% software
> agenda is wrong.  Let's take out crypto offload then too if we're going
> to take a consistently 100% software line.  Again, it's not either
> software or hardware; it's a spectrum of capabilities and we shouldn't
> be making the stack _less_ flexible.

The problem is that Michael during fixing of the stack for mainline
inclusion encountered a problem with the current implementation of the
hw scanning. We need to fix that problem.

The proposed solution (removing of the hw_scan callback) obviously
fixes the problem. Now, let's find something that fixes the problem as
well but doesn't remove the functionality. James already proposed a
solution that could work if a support for user space MLME is added. Do
you have an idea how to add it?

Thanks,

 Jiri

-- 
Jiri Benc
SUSE Labs