Initial work for ar9271

Initial work for ar9271

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

Atheros ar9271 support work is underway with the initial hardware
revision support already added on ath9k [1]. This driver shares a lot
of the framework used by ar6k so there may be potential of sharing
there. The final step of course is to add mac80211 support. ar9271
will just be the first of a few generation of firmware based Atheros
11n devices as such a different driver core will need to be written to
support these devices, specifically for usb its important as we need
to sleep during reads/writes, re-using ath9k as is may not quite do
it. To help iron out the specifics we would like to work with the
community on the rest of the driver. For now I've stuffed what I have
with a clean history on a git repo. If you'd like to work on the
driver I welcome patches:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/ar9271.git

You can get the ar9271.fw firmware here:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/athfw2lnx.git

I encourage really interested developers to please send me a note as
we would like to allocate sample cards for you.

Bare with me on the progress of the driver, this code is so new I
haven't even tested if firmware loading works but I think it may. At
least it compiles now.

I'm not yet sure if working with a separate repo or staging might be
best here as the driver does not yet give STA functionality, the whole
mac80211 driver part still remains to be developed. Lets play it by
ear, I'll see if we can get a mailing list created in the meantime
unless Greg doesn't mind me borrowing the driver project mailing list
for that.

[1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=124935567308276&w=2

  Luis

Re: Initial work for ar9271

[Greg KH]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 09:03:08PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> I'm not yet sure if working with a separate repo or staging might be
> best here as the driver does not yet give STA functionality, the whole
> mac80211 driver part still remains to be developed. Lets play it by
> ear, I'll see if we can get a mailing list created in the meantime
> unless Greg doesn't mind me borrowing the driver project mailing list
> for that.

Not at all, feel free to use it for something like this.

thanks for asking,

greg k-h

Re: Initial work for ar9271

[Joe Perches]

On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 21:03 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> If you'd like to work on the
> driver I welcome patches:
> 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/ar9271.git

I think this style ugly because it's non kernel standard.

int func(args)
{
	do {
		[ linear code ...]
		if (err) {
			errorcode = ;
			break;
		}
		[ more linear code ...]
	} while (0);

	if (errorcode) {
		handle()...
		return some_err;
	}

	return 0;
}

It's a bit too much like a try/throw/catch block.

Are patches accepted to convert it to the more
commonly used kernel style using gotos?

Re: Initial work for ar9271

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 9:31 PM, Joe Perches<joe@perches.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 21:03 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> If you'd like to work on the
>> driver I welcome patches:
>>
>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/ar9271.git
>
> I think this style ugly because it's non kernel standard.

Yup! Hence initial release.

> int func(args)
> {
>        do {
>                [ linear code ...]
>                if (err) {
>                        errorcode = ;
>                        break;
>                }
>                [ more linear code ...]
>        } while (0);
>
>        if (errorcode) {
>                handle()...
>                return some_err;
>        }
>
>        return 0;
> }
>
> It's a bit too much like a try/throw/catch block.

So I gladly welcome every type of patch. Nuke nuke nuke.

> Are patches accepted to convert it to the more
> commonly used kernel style using gotos?

Absolutely. Tons of things here have to be removed / ported / etc.
There is even kernel_thread() calls!

  Luis