From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Johannes Berg Subject: Re: [RFC] Alternate WE-21 support (core API) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 08:17:36 +0200 Message-ID: <1158128256.2894.8.camel@ux156> References: <1157031138.16040.17.camel@ux156> <20060831135112.GA6097@jm.kir.nu> <1157032805.16040.21.camel@ux156> <20060906205538.GA29767@tuxdriver.com> <20060906213053.GA21719@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <20060908142913.GD23852@tuxdriver.com> <20060908161345.GA27036@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <1157965694.2811.3.camel@ux156> <20060911162608.GA31459@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <1158050637.2854.16.camel@ux156> <20060912161737.GB3536@bougret.hpl.hp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from crystal.sipsolutions.net ([195.210.38.204]:19872 "EHLO sipsolutions.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751612AbWIMGQz (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:16:55 -0400 To: jt@hpl.hp.com In-Reply-To: <20060912161737.GB3536@bougret.hpl.hp.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 09:17 -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote: > I was initially very negative towards the WPA API (WPA + > extended scan), because it's so complex. I went back and forth with > Jouni trying to simplify it, but we did not manage to gain much. I > trust that Jouni did the best he could, that's just the nature of the > beast. :) > I was thinking of the WE -> nl80211 compatibility. It's pretty > trivial to do as far as WE is concerned, you just need to hack > get_handler() to return the nl80211 handler. Or, if you don't like a > single handler, you could have one wrapper per ioctl, which is even > easier. Currently, I don't rely on that at all, nl80211 relies on the driver/stack assigning ieee80211_ptr in the netdevice field and uses that as a cookie. IOW, get_handler() gets to die. My current plan for compatibility was to make all drivers cfg80211-away by making them register themselves with cfg80211 with a callback struct with entries for each thing they need to handle, and then introduce a translation layer that translates incoming WE requests into the appropriate callbacks just like nl80211 translates the incoming genetlink messages. > Do you have a recent version of your code so that I can see > how it can hook on your side ? I think we could put the generic > mechanism in place early so that people can add specifics as they need > them. The latest patches were posted to netdev quite a while ago, I haven't done anything with them recently. One thing I'd like to do is rename the include from net/nl80211.h to net/cfg80211.h so that it's more obvious that it isn't purely netlink (include/nl80211.h is the userspace netlink interface so that stays). johannes