On 01/29/2016 05:00 PM, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote: > Ksenija wrote: > >> I'm helping Greg do a bit of cleanup in the staging tree, I noticed that >> wlan-ng driver is maybe ready to be moved out of staging. Are there >> any TODO tasks left to do beside checkpatch.pl clean-up? > > Its FAQ was very clear: ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ > [archived at http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/wireless/linux-wlan-org_FAQ.txt ] > > --cut-- > Q: When will linux-wlan-ng be merged into the mainline kernel? > > Short answer: Never. > > First, the linux-netdev people will soundly reject this driver. > I don't begrudge them for this; indeed in their position I'd do > exactly the same. It's a sound engineering decision. > > linux-wlan-ng is obselete, and effort spent fixing it is better > spent elsewhere. You can't even buy the hardware any longer. > > The original design for linux-wlan-ng was to separate the 802.11 > stack from the actual hardware driver. This added a lot of > complexity, but would greatly ease the pain of supporitng > multiple hardware types. Unfortunately, the implementation was > turned out to be somewhat flawed, and hardware manufaturers went > away from the thick-mac model, leaving linux-wlan-ng overly > complex for what it did. > > (Ironically, the linux kernel is adopting a similar > separation model, but it is a long way off from being ready) > > So why not rewrite linux-wlan-ng to be more suitable, the > enterprising reader may ask? > > The kernel already has two drivers for prism2 (cs/pci/plx) > hardware -- hostap and orinoco. linux-wlan-ng basically > has three features not present in kernel drivers: > > 1) USB support > 2) nearly complete implemettion of the 802.11 MIB/MLME > 3) Firmware-based AP support > > (3) requires an expensive license that isn't even available any > longer, as the hostap mode works far better -- and is already > supported by in-kernel drivers. > > (2) would need to be removed or completely rewritten in order to > be merged, as it does not fit within existing kernel APIs, and > it would be effectively merging new kernel APIs. > > (1) Is the only truly unique thing that linux-wlan-ng does that > is generally needed any more. > > To merge it into the kernel, we'd need to strip out (2), which > would necessitate a complete rewrite -- to the point where > writing a new driver from scratch is easier. > > Basically, it would take far less effort to add USB > support to the in-kernel drivers than it would to make > linux-wlan-ng acceptable to be merged. > > In other words, the short answer is: Never. > --end-- > Detailed info in these threads: https://marc.info/?l=linux-wlan-user&m=125122113309475 https://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=138384105903345 _______________________________________________ devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/mailman/listinfo/driverdev-devel
