Re: [PATCH] staging/octeon: Mark Ethernet driver as BROKEN

[Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 05:52:31PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 06:18:36AM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > The code doesn't compile due to incompatible pointer errors such as
> > 
> > drivers/staging/octeon/ethernet-tx.c:649:50: error:
> > 	passing argument 1 of 'cvmx_wqe_get_grp' from incompatible pointer type
> > 
> > This is due to mixing, for example, cvmx_wqe_t with 'struct cvmx_wqe'.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, one can not just revert the primary offending commit, as doing so
> > results in secondary errors. This is made worse by the fact that the "removed"
> > typedefs still exist and are used widely outside the staging directory,
> > making the entire set of "remove typedef" changes pointless and wrong.
> 
> Ugh, sorry about that.
> 
> > Reflect reality and mark the driver as BROKEN.
> 
> Should I just delete this thing?  No one seems to be using it and there
> is no move to get it out of staging at all.
> 
> Will anyone actually miss it?  It can always come back of someone
> does...
> 

All it does is causing trouble and misguided attempts to clean it up.
If anything, the whole thing goes into the wrong direction (declare a
complete set of dummy functions just to be able to build the driver
with COMPILE_TEST ? Seriously ?).

I second the motion to drop it. This has been in staging for 10 years.
Don't we have some kind of time limit for code in staging ? If not,
should we ? If anyone really needs it, that person or group should
really invest the time to get it out of staging for good.

Guenter