From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from mail.atheros.com ([12.19.149.2]:62248 "EHLO mail.atheros.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933144Ab1ETOp3 (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 May 2011 10:45:29 -0400 Received: from mail.atheros.com ([10.234.20.105]) by sidewinder.atheros.com for ; Fri, 20 May 2011 07:44:59 -0700 From: Kalle Valo To: Marcel Holtmann CC: "linux-wireless\@vger.kernel.org" , "gregkh\@suse.de" , "linville\@tuxdriver.com" , "devel\@linuxdriverproject.org" Subject: Re: Plan for ath6kl cleanup References: <4DD668F4.6090308@atheros.com> <1305901563.2681.9.camel@aeonflux> Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 17:45:07 +0300 In-Reply-To: <1305901563.2681.9.camel@aeonflux> (Marcel Holtmann's message of "Fri, 20 May 2011 07:26:03 -0700") Message-ID: <87liy1qvm4.fsf@atheros.com> (sfid-20110520_164533_568162_24CC8DB0) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Marcel Holtmann writes: > Hi Kalle, Hi Marcel, >> We have been thinking about how to get ath6kl out from staging and get >> it to a first class citizen under drivers/net/wireless. There's quite a >> lot of work to do get ath6kl cleaned up and the prospect of doing all >> that through the staging-next tree wasn't that exciting. We would be >> sending hundreds of patches and it would take a long time to cleanup the >> driver. And the disconnection from the wireless core development also >> sounded very daunting (cfg80211 API changes etc.). > > my main question is why do you still bother with this driver and not > re-write it as a mac80211 driver from scratch. It seems to be more > softmac than fullmac anyway. Or am I mistaken here? Actually ar6003, the chip ath6kl supports, is a fullmac. It can take ethernet frames, all authentication/association frames are created by the firmware and firmware manages the roaming as well. So there isn't anything mac80211 could do. > The source code of the current staging driver is 5 MB in size. That is > by far the largest staging driver. Even brcm80211 is smaller. Yeah, the driver is huge. But once the cleanup is done it will be a lot smaller. Kalle