Re: [PATCH] staging: rtl8723au: Fix sparse warnings

[Krzysztof Konopko <kris@konagma.com>]

On 12/12/14 19:52, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> writes:
>> On 12/12/2014 05:35 AM, Krzysztof Konopko wrote:
>>> I was hunting particularly for inconsistencies with `sparse` and came
>>> across this one.  But I dug a bit further and I wonder why the driver is
>>> not using standard stuff like the one in `include/linux/ieee80211.h`
>>> where any data wider than one byte is clearly declared as __le<nn>?
>>
>> That is a good question. One possibility is that those definitions do
>> not exist on some of the older kernels that Realtek supports. They
>> generally work with 2.6.18 and newer.
> 
> The reason the 8723au driver doesn't use the defines from there is that
> in ieee80211.h they are part of struct ieee80211_mgmt, while the 8723au
> driver access the addba etc. elements without the full struct in place.
> 

And why is that the case?
(I'm trying to understand, not debunk)

Looks to me that this driver has been kept out of the tree for quite a
while (by Realtek) and now suffers from locally invented stuff.  I
understand this is a lot of work to unify the codebase with ieee80211.h,
but are there any technical hurdles?  I'm just curious.

Thanks,
Kris