Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

[Christian Jaeger]

Hello John W. Linville & list,

I wonder why on 2010-09-21 you reverted a bunch of patches by
Christian Lamparter, along with others:

git log d1222bce4344bdbfd1443c310c56a2fa7326ab85..8440f453633abac1503734fb3054b5686c5ac5ae^

I want to try the carl9170 driver, and so I've done a regex search for
carl9170 in wireless-testing/master, and cherry-picked them on top of
the current stable kernel (v2.6.35.7). When double checking I noticed
these reverts, which left me wondering whether that was an unnoticed
mistake and I should actually keep all of Christian Lamparter's
patches. The revert commits don't carry any explanation and I haven't
found it mentioned in the list archive.

(The patches applied cleanly, but I haven't built or tested the kernel
yet; to avoid forgetting to send this notice, I'm sending it away
already.)

Thanks
Christian.

Re: Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

[John W. Linville]

I swear, I should just stop doing wireless-testing at all...

Let me explain...again...

The history in wireless-testing is dirty.  It contains crap like
these reverts only so that I can continue to pull cleanly from
wireless-next-2.6 and wireless-2.6 even after I have had to rebase
them.  Otherwise, I would have to do lots of pointless fixups in a
tree that will never be pulled by Linus anyway.  The ugly history is
the alternative to rebasing, so that those who pull can do so without
git complaining.

The point of wireless-testing is to provide something between linux-2.6
and linux-next, something that is close to the stabilising release but
with currently pending wireless patches.  It is not intended to be
a basis for historical research.  Don't use it for that.

John

On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 07:33:40PM -0400, Christian Jaeger wrote:
> Hello John W. Linville & list,
> 
> I wonder why on 2010-09-21 you reverted a bunch of patches by
> Christian Lamparter, along with others:
> 
> git log d1222bce4344bdbfd1443c310c56a2fa7326ab85..8440f453633abac1503734fb3054b5686c5ac5ae^
> 
> I want to try the carl9170 driver, and so I've done a regex search for
> carl9170 in wireless-testing/master, and cherry-picked them on top of
> the current stable kernel (v2.6.35.7). When double checking I noticed
> these reverts, which left me wondering whether that was an unnoticed
> mistake and I should actually keep all of Christian Lamparter's
> patches. The revert commits don't carry any explanation and I haven't
> found it mentioned in the list archive.
> 
> (The patches applied cleanly, but I haven't built or tested the kernel
> yet; to avoid forgetting to send this notice, I'm sending it away
> already.)
> 
> Thanks
> Christian.
> 

-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.

Re: Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 6:23 AM, John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com> wrote:
> I swear, I should just stop doing wireless-testing at all...
>
> Let me explain...again...
>
> The history in wireless-testing is dirty.  It contains crap like
> these reverts only so that I can continue to pull cleanly from
> wireless-next-2.6 and wireless-2.6 even after I have had to rebase
> them.  Otherwise, I would have to do lots of pointless fixups in a
> tree that will never be pulled by Linus anyway.  The ugly history is
> the alternative to rebasing, so that those who pull can do so without
> git complaining.
>
> The point of wireless-testing is to provide something between linux-2.6
> and linux-next, something that is close to the stabilising release but
> with currently pending wireless patches.  It is not intended to be
> a basis for historical research.  Don't use it for that.

Since we get these questions quite often I've taken what you have
written and merged it here:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/process#wireless-testing.git

  Luis

Re: Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

[Christian Jaeger]

Thanks for your explantion.

My patches on top of the stable kernel don't build (they depend a
'cipher' member on ‘struct ieee80211_key_conf’, and I guess there may
be more). If I want to reach my goal of trying carl9170 with a stable
kernel, should I still proceed that route, i.e. finding the patches
that carl* depends on, or trying to change the carl* code to not
require them, or is there a better idea? I'd like to avoid running
wireless-testing as is if possible (for fear of stability and security
issues on this world-facing, supposedly stable router of mine).

Thanks,
Christian.

Re: Why were patches reverted on 2010-09-21? (carl9170 and others)

[John W. Linville]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:07:12AM -0400, Christian Jaeger wrote:
> Thanks for your explantion.
> 
> My patches on top of the stable kernel don't build (they depend a
> 'cipher' member on ‘struct ieee80211_key_conf’, and I guess there may
> be more). If I want to reach my goal of trying carl9170 with a stable
> kernel, should I still proceed that route, i.e. finding the patches
> that carl* depends on, or trying to change the carl* code to not
> require them, or is there a better idea? I'd like to avoid running
> wireless-testing as is if possible (for fear of stability and security
> issues on this world-facing, supposedly stable router of mine).

You might try the compat-wireless stuff on top of whatever kernel
you are using.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.