802.11 headers

802.11 headers

[Johannes Berg]

The d80211 headers are messy. Before merging, we definitely need to
clean them up and split them between userland-visible and kernel-only
headers, or else ... ;)

My current thoughts:
 - net/d80211_common.h can die sometime soon due to being replaced with
   linux/nl80211.h (to be published today).
 - net/d80211_mgmt.h needs cleaning up (I know Michael has been doing
   some of that), and then should probably be renamed to
   linux/ieee80211.h and be userland-visible, and contain a bunch of
   other frame definitions as well. A bit like net/ieee80211.h now,
   though more protocol-centric.
 - net/ieee80211_radiotap.h should be userland-visible, and hence
   linux/radiotap.h or such.
 - net/d80211_shared.h probably has the same fate as
   net/d80211_common.h, except for the _RATE_* thingies, but I'm not
   sure why they should be userland-visible.
 - net/d80211.h can stay there as-is, it's in-kernel only API.
 
Or put another way, my suggestions:
 - put all in-kernel API (for drivers) into net/d80211.h
 - put stuff defined in the IEEE 802.11 specification series into
   linux/ieee80211.h, make user-visible (headers-y in Kbuild!). This
   serves just as a reference. It's not really necessary that the kernel
   ships this, but we need it in the kernel and probably won't be
   pulling it from some other source. Besides, I wouldn't know where
   else to maintain it.
 - radiotap simply moves to linux/ and gets to be userland-visible. Of
   course, d80211 should actually start using it too ;)
 - all the other userland stuff seems to be configuration related and
   hence moves over to linux/nl80211.h

Comments?

johannes

Re: 802.11 headers

[Jiri Benc]

On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:48:19 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> My current thoughts:
>  - net/d80211_common.h can die sometime soon due to being replaced with
>    linux/nl80211.h (to be published today).
>  - net/d80211_mgmt.h needs cleaning up (I know Michael has been doing
>    some of that), and then should probably be renamed to
>    linux/ieee80211.h and be userland-visible, and contain a bunch of
>    other frame definitions as well. A bit like net/ieee80211.h now,
>    though more protocol-centric.
>  - net/ieee80211_radiotap.h should be userland-visible, and hence
>    linux/radiotap.h or such.
>  - net/d80211_shared.h probably has the same fate as

d80211_shared.h should probably be merged into d80211.h.

>    net/d80211_common.h, except for the _RATE_* thingies, but I'm not
>    sure why they should be userland-visible.
>  - net/d80211.h can stay there as-is, it's in-kernel only API.
>  
> Or put another way, my suggestions:
>  - put all in-kernel API (for drivers) into net/d80211.h
>  - put stuff defined in the IEEE 802.11 specification series into
>    linux/ieee80211.h, make user-visible (headers-y in Kbuild!). This
>    serves just as a reference. It's not really necessary that the kernel
>    ships this, but we need it in the kernel and probably won't be
>    pulling it from some other source. Besides, I wouldn't know where
>    else to maintain it.
>  - radiotap simply moves to linux/ and gets to be userland-visible. Of
>    course, d80211 should actually start using it too ;)
>  - all the other userland stuff seems to be configuration related and
>    hence moves over to linux/nl80211.h
> 
> Comments?

I like this proposal.

 Jiri

-- 
Jiri Benc
SUSE Labs

Re: 802.11 headers

[John W. Linville]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 02:34:43PM +0200, Jiri Benc wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:48:19 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:

> > Or put another way, my suggestions:
> >  - put all in-kernel API (for drivers) into net/d80211.h
> >  - put stuff defined in the IEEE 802.11 specification series into
> >    linux/ieee80211.h, make user-visible (headers-y in Kbuild!). This
> >    serves just as a reference. It's not really necessary that the kernel
> >    ships this, but we need it in the kernel and probably won't be
> >    pulling it from some other source. Besides, I wouldn't know where
> >    else to maintain it.
> >  - radiotap simply moves to linux/ and gets to be userland-visible. Of
> >    course, d80211 should actually start using it too ;)
> >  - all the other userland stuff seems to be configuration related and
> >    hence moves over to linux/nl80211.h
> > 
> > Comments?
> 
> I like this proposal.

I second that.

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville@tuxdriver.com