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Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:54:21 -0700
From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
To: Ethan Nelson-Moore <enelsonmoore@gmail.com>
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org, Yibo Dong
 <dong100@mucse.com>, Andrew Lunn <andrew+netdev@lunn.ch>, "David S. Miller"
 <davem@davemloft.net>, Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>, Paolo Abeni
 <pabeni@redhat.com>, MD Danish Anwar <danishanwar@ti.com>, Vadim Fedorenko
 <vadim.fedorenko@linux.dev>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] net: ethernet: rnpgbe: mark nonfunctional incomplete
 driver as BROKEN
Message-ID: <20260429175421.014bb28f@kernel.org>
In-Reply-To: <20260428030826.47509-1-enelsonmoore@gmail.com>
References: <20260428030826.47509-1-enelsonmoore@gmail.com>
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On Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:08:25 -0700 Ethan Nelson-Moore wrote:
> The rnpgbe driver as currently shipped in the kernel is incomplete and
> has no useful functionality. It will bind to a PCI device and create a
> network device, but that device does not function (its .ndo_start_xmit
> callback, rnpgbe_xmit_frame, just drops all packets). This situation
> means that users could enable this driver and have it load and attach
> to their device but not transfer any data. To remove the potential for
> user confusion, mark the driver as broken until it is completed and
> explain why this was done.

I'm having second thoughts about this. I'm worried users will come to
expect that drivers are marked as BROKEN until such time that they
can be considered a sufficiently complete replacement for an OOT /
vendor driver. This will be highly subjective.