Re: [PATCH v4 ] wl12xx: BA Initiator support

[Shahar Levi <shahar_levi@ti.com>]

On 11/30/2010 09:15 AM, Luciano Coelho wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-11-29 at 23:07 -0800, ext Ohad Ben-Cohen wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Luciano Coelho
>> <luciano.coelho@nokia.com>  wrote:
>> ...
>>> In theory the API *has* changed, not just extended.  Check this:
>>>
>>> -       ACX_BA_SESSION_RESPONDER_POLICY = 0x0055,
>>> -       ACX_BA_SESSION_INITIATOR_POLICY = 0x0056,
>>> +       ACX_BA_SESSION_POLICY_CFG   = 0x0055,
>>> +       ACX_BA_SESSION_RX_SETUP     = 0x0056,
>>>
>>> But in practice, this doesn't matter, because we were not using the
>>> RESPONDER/INITIATOR commands before...
>>
>> Right.  So an old driver will still work with this new firmware.
>>
>>> It's basically just those two extra commands that were added.  And one
>>> new event that is part of a future patch.
>>>
>>> In theory, we could check the firmware revision after boot and bail out
>>> if the version doesn't match.
>>
>> Why not just disable BA sessions in this case (and keep that new event
>> masked), and let the driver keep running (just like it does today) ?
>>
>> This way the new driver will work even with the old firmware (yes,
>> with degraded functionality, but most random ppl will just not care),
>> and of course, the old driver will keep working with the new firmware.
>>
>> For us developers who lurk in linux-wireless it seems like a trivial
>> change, but if we consider the growing size of the 12xx community, and
>> the long period of time for which such a change will be effective (ppl
>> upgrading to latest compat, ppl that will one day upgrade to 2.6.38,
>> future ppl that will bisect and cross this firmware name change,
>> etc...), it's actually a lot of accumulated pain.
>>
>> To keep our community happy, I vote to eliminate this pain when not necessary.
>
> Hear, hear!
>
> Shahar, can you fix that?
Yes, will do.
Shahar