Re: [PATCH v2] net: ethernet: rnpgbe: mark nonfunctional incomplete driver as BROKEN

[Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>]

On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:13:46 -0700 Ethan Nelson-Moore wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 5:54 PM Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org> wrote:
> > 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.  
> 
> I understand your concern, but there is precedent for doing this when
> the driver doesn't work at all.
> 
> The ntsync driver was marked as broken in commit f5b335dc025c ("misc:
> ntsync: mark driver as "broken" to prevent from building") until it
> was fully merged. The BROKEN dependency was then removed in commit
> c301e1fefc2d ("ntsync: No longer depend on BROKEN.")

ntsync is mere 1.2kLoC, that's 10x smaller than typical networking
driver these days, and even (slightly) smaller than rnpgbe(!)

Most in-tree networking drivers play constant catch-up with the OOT
version so they are never "fully merged".

> If it were my decision, I would remove BROKEN from this driver once it
> supports a stable network connection, and perhaps also once it
> survives suspends and resumes, since that is expected in modern
> desktop use cases. I think that is a fairly objective reading of the
> word BROKEN.

That'd require us to know if the device is going to be used on
desktop because for datacenter NICs suspend/resume does not matter.

> It might also be a good idea to agree on expected uses of
> CONFIG_BROKEN and document them in init/Kconfig.
> Currently it says:
>   This option allows you to choose whether you want to try to
>   compile (and fix) old drivers that haven't been updated to
>   new infrastructure.
> which does not fully encompass what it is used for.

Maybe it was written in simpler times, maybe the help message was
aspirational to begin with..