Re: libertas (private) ioctls vs. nl80211

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

> On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:09:01 +0100 Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:
> Independent of any nl80211 status the private libertas ioctls have to
> go.  Not only don't we want private ioctls for mesh networking but rather
> have it as driver-independent interface, but the actual libertas interface
> is the worst possible choice.  It uses the absolutely broken iwpriv interface
> instead of plain ioctls, and has a cmpletely confusing forest of sub ioctls.
> 
> I strongly recommend ripping out all the ioctls for 2.6.22 and waiting for
> a proper interface to appear.

If we're going to change the interface in the future (and it sounds like
we should) then yes, we should strenuously avoid releasing the current interface
in 2.6.22.

>  The olpc people can patch the ioctls back
> in for their use, but we should not put in interface like this into the
> upstream kernel.  All NIC vendors get pushed back badly when they try
> to put in less crappy ioctls, there is no reason to make a exception for
> libtertas just because it's used by a project that some of the involved
> maintainers like a lot.

I suspect that the probability of your proposal succeeding would be increased
if you could prepare a patch...