Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Kalle Valo]

Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:

> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?

For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.

> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.

And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.

-- 
Kalle Valo

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Julian Calaby]

Hi Glen,

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org> wrote:
> Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
>>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
>>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
>
> For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.
>
>> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.
>
> And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
> reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.

On the same subject, the wilc1000 driver has taken some pretty big
steps in the past few days, how far away do you think it is from
graduating from staging?

Thanks,

-- 
Julian Calaby

Email: julian.calaby@gmail.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 09:48:16AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
> Hi Glen,
> 
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org> wrote:
> > Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:
> >
> >> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
> >>> Hi All,
> >>>
> >>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
> >>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
> >>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
> >
> > For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.
> >
> >> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.
> >
> > And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
> > reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.
> 
> On the same subject, the wilc1000 driver has taken some pretty big
> steps in the past few days, how far away do you think it is from
> graduating from staging?

I have 221 patches in my to-apply queue to be merged for this driver, at
the very least, those need to be merged before anyone should review it
for graduation.  That number also implies that there is still quite a
lot to be done, but I would not know for sure until that happens.

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Julian Calaby]

Hi Greg,

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 09:48:16AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
>> Hi Glen,
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org> wrote:
>> > Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:
>> >
>> >> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
>> >>> Hi All,
>> >>>
>> >>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
>> >>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
>> >>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
>> >
>> > For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.
>> >
>> >> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.
>> >
>> > And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
>> > reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.
>>
>> On the same subject, the wilc1000 driver has taken some pretty big
>> steps in the past few days, how far away do you think it is from
>> graduating from staging?
>
> I have 221 patches in my to-apply queue to be merged for this driver, at
> the very least, those need to be merged before anyone should review it
> for graduation.  That number also implies that there is still quite a
> lot to be done, but I would not know for sure until that happens.

I figured that was the case (there's a _lot_ of churn on that driver)
however I've noticed the patches recently have swung away from being
straight checkpatch / coding style cleanups towards feature additions
and bug fixes, hence my question.

Thanks,

-- 
Julian Calaby

Email: julian.calaby@gmail.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:28:38AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
> Hi Greg,
> 
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 09:48:16AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
> >> Hi Glen,
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org> wrote:
> >> > Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:
> >> >
> >> >> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
> >> >>> Hi All,
> >> >>>
> >> >>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
> >> >>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
> >> >>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
> >> >
> >> > For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.
> >> >
> >> >> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.
> >> >
> >> > And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
> >> > reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.
> >>
> >> On the same subject, the wilc1000 driver has taken some pretty big
> >> steps in the past few days, how far away do you think it is from
> >> graduating from staging?
> >
> > I have 221 patches in my to-apply queue to be merged for this driver, at
> > the very least, those need to be merged before anyone should review it
> > for graduation.  That number also implies that there is still quite a
> > lot to be done, but I would not know for sure until that happens.
> 
> I figured that was the case (there's a _lot_ of churn on that driver)
> however I've noticed the patches recently have swung away from being
> straight checkpatch / coding style cleanups towards feature additions
> and bug fixes, hence my question.

Please feel free to audit it and let us know the details :)

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Julian Calaby]

Hi Greg,

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:32 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:28:38AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 09:48:16AM +1100, Julian Calaby wrote:
>> >> Hi Glen,
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org> wrote:
>> >> > Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com> writes:
>> >> >
>> >> >> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 01:16:56PM +0100, Ksenija Stanojević wrote:
>> >> >>> Hi All,
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
>> >> >>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
>> >> >>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
>> >> >
>> >> > For questions like this you should CC linux-wireless.
>> >> >
>> >> >> I happened to look through this code recently.  It's terrible.
>> >> >
>> >> > And uses wireless extensions, yuck. There's a lot of work to get it into
>> >> > reasonable shape, fixing checkpatch warnings will not be enough.
>> >>
>> >> On the same subject, the wilc1000 driver has taken some pretty big
>> >> steps in the past few days, how far away do you think it is from
>> >> graduating from staging?
>> >
>> > I have 221 patches in my to-apply queue to be merged for this driver, at
>> > the very least, those need to be merged before anyone should review it
>> > for graduation.  That number also implies that there is still quite a
>> > lot to be done, but I would not know for sure until that happens.
>>
>> I figured that was the case (there's a _lot_ of churn on that driver)
>> however I've noticed the patches recently have swung away from being
>> straight checkpatch / coding style cleanups towards feature additions
>> and bug fixes, hence my question.
>
> Please feel free to audit it and let us know the details :)

After looking at the latest round of patches, I take back my comment:
it's not ready.

Thanks,

-- 
Julian Calaby

Email: julian.calaby@gmail.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

Ksenija wrote:

> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?

Its FAQ was very clear: ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ
[archived at http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/wireless/linux-wlan-org_FAQ.txt ]

--cut--
Q: When will linux-wlan-ng be merged into the mainline kernel?

	Short answer:  Never.

	First, the linux-netdev people will soundly reject this driver.
	I don't begrudge them for this; indeed in their position I'd do
	exactly the same.  It's a sound engineering decision.

	linux-wlan-ng is obselete, and effort spent fixing it is better
	spent elsewhere.  You can't even buy the hardware any longer.

	The original design for linux-wlan-ng was to separate the 802.11
	stack from the actual hardware driver.  This added a lot of
	complexity, but would greatly ease the pain of supporitng
	multiple hardware types.  Unfortunately, the implementation was
	turned out to be somewhat flawed, and hardware manufaturers went
	away from the thick-mac model, leaving linux-wlan-ng overly
	complex for what it did.

	(Ironically, the linux kernel is adopting a similar
	 separation model, but it is a long way off from being ready)

	So why not rewrite linux-wlan-ng to be more suitable, the
	enterprising reader may ask?

	The kernel already has two drivers for prism2 (cs/pci/plx)
	hardware -- hostap and orinoco. linux-wlan-ng basically
	has three features not present in kernel drivers:
	
		1) USB support
		2) nearly complete implemettion of the 802.11 MIB/MLME
		3) Firmware-based AP support
	
	(3) requires an expensive license that isn't even available any
	longer, as the hostap mode works far better -- and is already
	supported by in-kernel drivers.

	(2) would need to be removed or completely rewritten in order to
	be merged, as it does not fit within existing kernel APIs, and
	it would be effectively merging new kernel APIs.

	(1) Is the only truly unique thing that linux-wlan-ng does that
	is generally needed any more.

	To merge it into the kernel, we'd need to strip out (2), which
	would necessitate a complete rewrite -- to the point where
	writing a new driver from scratch is easier.

	Basically, it would take far less effort to add USB
	support to the in-kernel drivers than it would to make
	linux-wlan-ng acceptable to be merged.

	In other words, the short answer is:  Never.
--end--

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

On 01/29/2016 05:00 PM, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> Ksenija wrote:
> 
>> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
>> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
>> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
> 
> Its FAQ was very clear: ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ
> [archived at http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/wireless/linux-wlan-org_FAQ.txt ]
> 
> --cut--
> Q: When will linux-wlan-ng be merged into the mainline kernel?
> 
> 	Short answer:  Never.
> 
> 	First, the linux-netdev people will soundly reject this driver.
> 	I don't begrudge them for this; indeed in their position I'd do
> 	exactly the same.  It's a sound engineering decision.
> 
> 	linux-wlan-ng is obselete, and effort spent fixing it is better
> 	spent elsewhere.  You can't even buy the hardware any longer.
> 
> 	The original design for linux-wlan-ng was to separate the 802.11
> 	stack from the actual hardware driver.  This added a lot of
> 	complexity, but would greatly ease the pain of supporitng
> 	multiple hardware types.  Unfortunately, the implementation was
> 	turned out to be somewhat flawed, and hardware manufaturers went
> 	away from the thick-mac model, leaving linux-wlan-ng overly
> 	complex for what it did.
> 
> 	(Ironically, the linux kernel is adopting a similar
> 	 separation model, but it is a long way off from being ready)
> 
> 	So why not rewrite linux-wlan-ng to be more suitable, the
> 	enterprising reader may ask?
> 
> 	The kernel already has two drivers for prism2 (cs/pci/plx)
> 	hardware -- hostap and orinoco. linux-wlan-ng basically
> 	has three features not present in kernel drivers:
> 	
> 		1) USB support
> 		2) nearly complete implemettion of the 802.11 MIB/MLME
> 		3) Firmware-based AP support
> 	
> 	(3) requires an expensive license that isn't even available any
> 	longer, as the hostap mode works far better -- and is already
> 	supported by in-kernel drivers.
> 
> 	(2) would need to be removed or completely rewritten in order to
> 	be merged, as it does not fit within existing kernel APIs, and
> 	it would be effectively merging new kernel APIs.
> 
> 	(1) Is the only truly unique thing that linux-wlan-ng does that
> 	is generally needed any more.
> 
> 	To merge it into the kernel, we'd need to strip out (2), which
> 	would necessitate a complete rewrite -- to the point where
> 	writing a new driver from scratch is easier.
> 
> 	Basically, it would take far less effort to add USB
> 	support to the in-kernel drivers than it would to make
> 	linux-wlan-ng acceptable to be merged.
> 
> 	In other words, the short answer is:  Never.
> --end--
> 

Detailed info in these threads:
https://marc.info/?l=linux-wlan-user&m=125122113309475
https://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=138384105903345

Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Solomon Peachy]

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On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 05:11:04PM +0100, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> >> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
> >> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
> >> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
> > 
> > Its FAQ was very clear: ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ
> > [archived at http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/wireless/linux-wlan-org_FAQ.txt ]

As author of that particular FAQ entry (written nearly ten years ago) 
let me say that nothing in there has any bearing on the situation that 
exists today.

At the time, I didn't think it was worth the significant effort to get 
prism2_usb into the mainline, but obviously some enterprising folks 
disagreed with me, and eventually put forth the elbow grease necessary 
to get it into -staging and all of the subsequent cleanups.

From where I sit, the basic question is this: Is the prism2_usb driver 
now considered good enough to promote out of -staging? If not, what 
needs doing and who is willing to see it through?  If it is, then just 
do it already.  :)

Oh, I'm still hosting the firmware files needed for this thing, and I 
see a consistent 4K or so downloads a month.  So there are obviously 
users out there still.

 - Solomon
-- 
Solomon Peachy        		       pizza at shaftnet dot org
Delray Beach, FL                          ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

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Re: Move wlan-ng out of staging?

[Sudip Mukherjee]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 05:00:16PM +0100, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> Ksenija wrote:
> 
> > I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that
> > wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there
> > any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up?
> 
> Its FAQ was very clear: ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ
> [archived at http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/wireless/linux-wlan-org_FAQ.txt ]
> 
> --cut--
> Q: When will linux-wlan-ng be merged into the mainline kernel?
> 
> 	Short answer:  Never.

The ultimate aim of a driver in staging is to graduate out of staging
area into the main part of the kernel. If it is already known that this
driver can never move out of staging then IMHO its better to remove it.

regards
sudip