Re: should we revert the cfg80211 API patches?

["Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@gmail.com>]

On Jan 30, 2008 11:25 AM, Tomas Winkler <tomasw@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 30, 2008 6:16 PM, Jory A. Pratt <geekypenguin@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Johannes Berg wrote:
> > > John,
> > >
> > > It appears that there's more trouble caused by my cfg80211 band API
> > > patch than people are willing to put up with. Tomas has already asked
> > > for it to be reverted, and neither Michael (Buesch) nor Stefano want to
> > > maintain two driver branches (one "stable" 2.6.25 branch and one
> > > "development" "for the future" branch).
> > >
> > > FWIW, I support your decision to not push this particular patch for
> > > 2.6.25, it really doesn't fall into the "tested well enough to merge
> > > during merge window" category.
> > >
> > > Additionally, since Michael Wu has (privately) announced to stop working
> > > on wireless, a number of drivers are effectively unmaintained now and
> > > I'm not sure I can quickly fix the breakage that my patch probably
> > > caused in those drivers, especially since Michael Wu is the only
> > > developer with access to all that hardware.
> > >
> > > To ease the short term pain, we can remove/revert the commits in
> > > question (those being 51c4c94e89a2042e8b20d640b49b6b605d71420d,
> > > 6854a5291cce341751a7e2e195cc3e97d95afeec and
> > > d0776155b288c20cc936bfd87d9a76255f244ed8).
> > >
> > > Maybe I should have waited longer or posted the patches earlier. I
> > > didn't post them earlier because I had not wanted to disrupt Intel's
> > > iwlwifi work too much knowing that there were patches, and then those
> > > patches caused bad breakage with my patch so I had to wait for another
> > > Intel patchset fixing a number of bugs they introduced... I'll admit
> > > that timing was horrible.
> > >
> > > But, I'll be frank, if the patches are removed/revert I probably won't
> > > continue maintaining them. I can't do much with these patches but
> > > continually forward port them on top of new driver changes which is
> > > boring and useless work. Experience has shown that hardly anybody but me
> > > [1] actually tests my patches until I push them into your tree, so
> > > continuing to forward port these patches won't actually help them become
> > > better but can only make sure they don't completely bitrot into
> > > oblivion.
> > >
> > > The only way forward I see if these patches are reverted is that we
> > > announce with the reversion that we'll merge them again in N weeks (with
> > > N being a reasonably small number, say 4-6) and until then people can
> > > test the patches and send me driver updates that I'll incorporate. But I
> > > don't see how useful that is vs. just leaving the patches in place and
> > > you managing the required driver updates.
> > >
> > > johannes
> > >
> > > [1] the only other people who test it seem to be mostly clueless people
> > > who want to get AP mode working and then ask me stupid questions in
> > > private... there are exceptions of course
> > >
> > Reverting the patch is not the answer. Everyone just needs to step up
> > and fix what they can. If maintainers are needed a call needs to be put
> > out to find one.
> > The work is in the direction that moves wireless in linux toward that of
> > a windows machine that the users want and need.
>
> Agree.
> Just, the timing was unfortunate.

Please keep. The question then becomes if we should push for the merge window.

  Luis