On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 19 November 2010 00:53, Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >>> Also, please review the past multi-os driver initiatives that have >>> sprung up over the years (about 1 every 10 years it seems). ÂPlease >>> learn from the past as to why those have failed every single time, and >>> why we don't want to even try to do that again. >> >> :-) thanks, just testing waters to see what's possible and what >> direction to focus more on. > > Being involved atm in the "re-multi-OS'ing" of ath code (ie, merging > some ath9k bits and pieces back into FreeBSD's HAL), I really > appreciate how the bulk of the hardware-fiddling bits are OS agnostic. > There's some messiness surrounding the 802.11 stack flags (which the > FreeBSD HAL "indirects" via HAL flags, hiding away some of the > net80211 internals) but a lot of the net80211 stuff is still tightly > integrated with the HAL. There's some platform specific stuff in > hardware twiddling functions (eg "am I a 40mhz channel? Am i a 2ghz > channel") but so far it's been straightforward to translate the > macros. > > Now that I've just begun testing (what seems like!) functioning 11n > TX/RX in my HAL, I plan on starting to merge in more ath9k related > driver code in. I'll provide some more feedback to the ath9k-devel > list as I do this. I'm hoping that large chunks of the hardware > related code (eg AR9002 calibration) can be thrown in with very minor > changes. > > But so far, I have this to say: > > * decoupling the hardware twiddling stuff from OS/802.11 stack > specific stuff is helpful; ath9k_hw mostly is 802.11 stack independent except band enum usage, and maybe one other variable we stuffed in there to help clean out code more. > * some of the base types are different (eg integer type layout, bool, > etc), but that's relatively straightforward to merge over; OK > * keeping the bits that need locking in "higher level" files (ie, > separate from hardware twiddling as much as possible) is also helpful. We do this already. > * trying to make the actual interface related code (eg "if_ath.c" in > FreeBSD; it's been broken out in ath9k) platform agnostic is likely > very difficult and a path to the parent posters "fail." Agreed. Thanks for your feedback. Luis -- 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
