"Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 01:56:48PM +0300, Kalle Valo wrote: >> "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> >> > I see all my TI Wilink patches have been marked as "deferred" in the >> > wireless patchwork. Please could you explain what the plan is with >> > these patches, especially this one which fixes a serious frustrating >> > failing that makes AP mode on this hardware very unreliable and thus >> > useless. >> >> I'm just swamped with patches, I'll try to look at these soon. >> >> I wish that TI would take a more active role in upstream, for example >> reviewing and testing patches would help a lot. > > I believe the problem has been that TI have had an attitude of "we > only support people using 4.19.38, if you can't reproduce the problem > there we aren't interested". To see the versions they support: > > https://git.ti.com/cgit/wilink8-wlan/build-utilites/tree/patches/kernel_patches?h=r8.9&id=a2ee50aa5190ed3b334373d6cd09b1bff56ffcf7 > > basically, all are ancient. > > They also appear take the attitude that all the kernel code is ripe > for them to hack about with - whcih is why this fix has had to be > reworked so it isn't removing NL80211_FEATURE_FULL_AP_CLIENT_STATE > for _all_ kernel wireless drivers! > > Also, I think they also require one to use their hostapd and > wpa_supplicant, probably for a similar reason. I know that in some > of the patches they've hacked in API changes... > > Then one can see the attitude of lock-step firmware and driver > upgrade - you can't use 8.9.1.x.x firmware with their older driver, > and you can't use 8.9.0.x.x with their newer driver. That, of course, > is not acceptable to mainline. > > So, given all this, IMHO it's probably a good thing TI aren't trying > to submit their stuff upstream... that is, unless they are willing > to learn how to "do things correctly". > > Maybe I'm being too hard on TI's wireless division, but that seems to > be what has been going on. Yeah, the all you describe above is very common in wireless vendors :/ But vendors do learn, Realtek is a great example of that. Let's hope that TI does too. -- https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/ https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches
