From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from metis.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de (metis.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de [185.203.201.7]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5AB5A1EDA10 for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:47:16 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=185.203.201.7 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1741340841; cv=none; b=FT5S7FDSIah8mKUTpeqhFMuV4R0vY8mwehFW/X+LKcGDIKjMMUSCrBg/VXey19LvjWpbu06rmSgA/qF2N86jq31Q+Ii+xOH0H7Zk3UpxYAYsU7A+cwdoG3HSewc5kQS8redhLFWEuJGXMalpqZ24Rl8Y9BR8+lYMcgOaZz9cRIw= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1741340841; c=relaxed/simple; bh=92nkMmAVYP7zX5gKkAp6xwPsdaBgiZRMK8Xb+OeG7r0=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=UWCymkZjhSZVkulFmrNGjnFI4zts1BH9/Iv+gDsLFbI9NurL5QiBbd4+sofhZoetleCS/vGpVjWM9bDlxnZNe+SI23VjPIzqTWmsaJ6IUuzAfinzDxInrj1rQRFBPmNA+HFZScmk5jwUijMW6Ei08vwXy6yAzPdPlrFMfGXUpl4= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=pengutronix.de; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=pengutronix.de; arc=none smtp.client-ip=185.203.201.7 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=pengutronix.de Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=pengutronix.de Received: from drehscheibe.grey.stw.pengutronix.de ([2a0a:edc0:0:c01:1d::a2]) by metis.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de with esmtps (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1tqUIO-0003FP-He; Fri, 07 Mar 2025 10:47:08 +0100 Received: from pty.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de ([2a0a:edc0:2:b01:1d::c5]) by drehscheibe.grey.stw.pengutronix.de with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.96) (envelope-from ) id 1tqUIO-004SpX-0b; Fri, 07 Mar 2025 10:47:08 +0100 Received: from sha by pty.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de with local (Exim 4.96) (envelope-from ) id 1tqUIO-000S6D-0F; Fri, 07 Mar 2025 10:47:08 +0100 Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2025 10:47:08 +0100 From: Sascha Hauer To: Johannes Berg Cc: Brian Norris , linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, Francesco Dolcini , kernel@pengutronix.de, David Lin Subject: Re: Future of mwifiex driver Message-ID: References: <2587f323fe19b33d2e9ec49bdc3979f71b9c0ba0.camel@sipsolutions.net> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <2587f323fe19b33d2e9ec49bdc3979f71b9c0ba0.camel@sipsolutions.net> X-Sent-From: Pengutronix Hildesheim X-URL: http://www.pengutronix.de/ X-Accept-Language: de,en X-Accept-Content-Type: text/plain X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 2a0a:edc0:0:c01:1d::a2 X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: sha@pengutronix.de X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on metis.whiteo.stw.pengutronix.de); SAEximRunCond expanded to false X-PTX-Original-Recipient: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 09:48:13AM +0100, Johannes Berg wrote: > Hi all, > > Sorry I didn't reply earlier - I was dragging my feet, but also didn't > really know if I can add anything beyond what I already wrote. > > > On Mon, 2025-03-03 at 17:45 -0800, Brian Norris wrote: > > Hi Sascha, > > > > On Mon, Mar 03, 2025 at 12:05:26PM +0100, Sascha Hauer wrote: > > > I am worried about the future of the mwifiex driver. NXP has an ongoing > > > effort of forking the driver to support their new chips, but the forked > > > driver lacks support for the old chips supported by the current mwifiex > > > driver. > > [...] > > > I have a series here [1] doing some cleanup work which I'd still like to > > > get forward. > > [...] > > > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/87ldwyumvq.fsf@kernel.org/ > > > > I'll apologize for that one stalling out a bit. IIRC, 11 of 12 patches > > looked great, but I got stuck on the "fix MAC address handling" patch, > > because it's a lot tougher to guarantee it doesn't break some use cases > > while fixing things. But really, it's probably mostly a bandwidth thing > > for me, as I really don't have many cycles to spend on things (and > > especially when it gets beyond "obvious cleanup" and requires > > substantial testing and/or reasoning). > > I guess that means could also partially resend the series, and get 11 of > the 12 in? I see the MAC address handling is first, but a cursory look > suggests that at least not all of the other would have a hard dependency > on it. OK, I'll respin the series without the MAC address patch. Next I'll have another look at the MAC address patch and see if I can improve it further and send this as a separate patch. > > 4. A key difference between #3 and mwifiex is, like you say, that > > mwifiex has a pretty low quality baseline. If I were maintaining it > > from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have accepted it. > > Indeed, the above is _definitely_ not true for mwifiex/nxpwifi. I've > effectively proven in the other thread that it's just a straight up copy > without any modernisation etc. If there had actually been a real reason > to not work with the same code base, then that might have made sense - > perhaps with some library code split out. > > But copying an old crappy driver for the sake of "we don't want to > maintain an old crappy driver" is a really bad argument to make?! Thanks for your clear words. For me that means that I can put more effort into the mwifiex driver without risking that it becomes obsolete soon. Sascha -- Pengutronix e.K. | | Steuerwalder Str. 21 | http://www.pengutronix.de/ | 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0 | Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686 | Fax: +49-5121-206917-5555 |