RE: [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable"

Grumbach, Emmanuel
2014-12-31T07:44:22Z

> Subject: [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable"
>
> This reverts commit 24a0aa212ee2dbe44360288684478d76a8e20a0a.
>
> It's causing severe userspace breakage. Namely, all the utilities from
> wireless-utils which are relying on CONFIG_WEXT (which means tools like
> 'iwconfig', 'iwlist', etc) are not working anymore. There is a 'iw' utility in
> newer wireless-tools, which is supposed to be a replacement for all the
> "deprecated" binaries, but it's far away from being massively adopted.
>
> Please see [1] for example of the userspace breakage this is causing.
>
> In addition to that, Larry Finger reports [2] that this patch is also causing
> ipw2200 driver being impossible to build.
>
> To me this clearly shows that CONFIG_WEXT is far, far away from being
> "deprecated enough" to be removed.
>
> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1857010
> [2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/343688
>
> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>

Wait. I don't want to discuss the userspace API deprecation here but
I do think that this patch should be applied to the proper tree if at all.
The proper tree is mac80211.git. Now you are unhappy with what happens
there and want to escalate - fine. But then, please do so following the
natural hierarchy of the trees: net.git. Then mac80211.git's maintainer
(Johannes) will be able to sync with your change more easily.
Johannes doesn't need me as an advocate, but I feel that reverting a
mac80211 patch in linux.git while we are only in -rc2 while everybody
is on holiday leave is a bit unfair.

> ---
> net/wireless/Kconfig | 2 +-
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/net/wireless/Kconfig b/net/wireless/Kconfig index
> 22ba971..29c8675 100644
> --- a/net/wireless/Kconfig
> +++ b/net/wireless/Kconfig
> @@ -175,7 +175,7 @@ config CFG80211_INTERNAL_REGDB
> Most distributions have a CRDA package. So if unsure, say N.
>
> config CFG80211_WEXT
> - bool
> + bool "cfg80211 wireless extensions compatibility"
> depends on CFG80211
> select WEXT_CORE
> help
> --
> Jiri Kosina
> SUSE Labs