On Tue, 2009-02-17 at 22:09 +0100, Marcel Holtmann wrote: > Hi Johannes, > > > > > What exactly is broken by this? Wext never guaranteed that 'qual' values > > > > be present, and thus any application that breaks from not having 'qual' > > > > is broken anyway. > > > > > > that be it, but I would still consider this a regression. Since when do > > > we just start removing API details without any proper warning or grace > > > period? > > > > Why not? The API even contains whether or not the values are valid, and > > after discussing with many of the stakeholders (network manager, > > wpa_supplicant) we've decided that there's little use in the qual.qual > > value. Especially since you want to compare the 'quality' of the AP > > against the one you're associated to, so qual isn't really useful at all > > due to the various factors it can contain. > > > > So hey, if you want to scream "regression" then we can add a 'qual.qual' > > value back. It'll still be entirely pointless, and I'll still be against > > it, but I'm not going to risk anyone reverting this patch, it's way too > > useful. And if you're going to scream regression then please keep in > > mind that then you're going to scream about the wext limit again... I > > can't fix it up in the next couple of weeks anyway. > > remember that I am all for replacing WEXT and getting rid of it, but we > need to be careful with just removing parts of the API in the middle > without people noticing. At least I missed it. So you can argue that it > is my fault, but I think it is not really clear to everybody that this > value is missing now with future kernel versions. > > And that WEXT doesn't guarantee that qual.qual is present is not a > really good point since cfg80211 in the past did fill in this value. Would setting qual->updated |= IW_QUAL_QUAL_INVALID; work for you? If some app doesn't handle that, it's totally, completely broken. >From wireless.h: #define IW_QUAL_QUAL_INVALID 0x10 /* Driver doesn't provide value */ I don't think the docs can get much clearer than that... There are still some drivers that will set INVALID on qual because they simply don't provide it. Dan -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
