Re: [PATCH 4/7] o80211s: (mac80211s) basic mesh interface support

[Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>]

Johannes Berg wrote:
>> Agreed about filename length. I would prefer not to make mesh
>> networking configurable, as STA, IBSS, etc modes aren't configurable
>> either. I prefer to avoid polluting the data path with ifdefs.
> 
> Ok, I'm not sure, it just seems like quite a bit of code especially when
> all the other features will be added, something people like the OpenWRT
> folks might not like. nbd?
Depends on how big it is. I think merging it without ifdefs is fine for
now. If it gets too big, we can make some ifdef patches later.

>> Mesh APs are not supported yet, but we plan to support them through a
>> different interface type (e.g.  ..._TYPE_MAP) or extending the AP
>> interface type. Mesh STAs and APs will share all the mesh-specific
>> stuff (peer link discovery, path discovery, etc) but they have little
>> in common in the data path, so I do not think it makes sense to use
>> the same interface type for both. Maybe I should rename ..IF_TYPE_MESH
>> to ..IF_TYPE_MESH_STA?
> 
> Probably. Come to think of it, how much mesh networking is actually done
> by the mesh AP? I guess we need to support this in hostapd rather than
> the kernel?
If we're forced to use hostapd for starting the mesh networking, then that
would probably be a bigger source of bloat than the mesh code itself :)

- Felix