Hello.
On 14/03/16 10:30, Alexander Aring wrote:
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 05:39:12PM +0100, Stefan Schmidt wrote:
Hello.
Missing a bit context here as the original message never made it to the
list.
linux-wpan was cc'ed inside the mail, but there was some html stuff
there... I don't know why it isn't arrived at linux-wpan.
If it had html in it vger would reject it.
Anyway...
There exists a bugzilla entry for that and John Linville said that I
should care about that, see [0].
OK
On 10/03/16 10:10, Alexander Aring wrote:
Hi,
I think this is a good time to remove the deprecated netlink interface
for 802.15.4.
Stefan please say your opinion here. There should be really nobody which
use this interface anymore.
My mind haven't really changed on this topic. I understand why you want it
removed but given that the general rule of the kernel is to have backward
compatibility we can't just remove it. Dropping the old netlink interface
breaks userspace compatibility, even if it only is for deprecated tools like
lowpan-tools, etc.
My take on it is that we live with it. Keeping it around but not extending
it. Maybe add a warning to dmesg iwhen some application uses the old
interface.
Is it more code cleanliness/maintenance or bug reports that urge you to get
rid of it?
This is one of the smallest problem, I can live with "live with it". But
when I need to touch it because "nl802154" and "ieee802154" use the same
INTERNAL interface, e.g. llsec. I don't want to handle backwards
compatibility for that.
This complete handling with the damnd backwards compatibility for a
interface which is totally broken. (Yes I think [0] is one of the
smallest issues). We getting stucked in developing of 802.15.4 to
develop a better netlink interface (nl802154).
The old interface I would describe as:
- deprecated
- broken
- there exists no official userspace tool to handle everything, e.g.
llsec, txpower, csma, etc...
I want to remove it otherwise the branch will die again, because stupid
handling a broken interface which nobody should use anymore.
My argument is:
Don't forget the 802.15.4 branch is still experimental, no maintainer
acked this commit [1]. For EXPERIMENTAL things you can be sure that the
UAPI interface will not be changed later and I would still say this
branch is EXPERIMENTAL.
I also have 3-4 things which we need to change inside the new interface
(nl802154), because the deprecated already handle it wrong and I simple
copy&pasted it... but it was wrong. Then handling of two UAPI's which
need to access the INTERNAL api (cfg802154) will be mostly impossible.
You are sold on it and you are doing a lot of work there. Give it a try.
Maybe you are lucky and it will just go through and we only have to deal
with a few complaints about lowpan-tools no longer working with 4.6/4.7.
Be prepared though that if everything goes south you might find yourself
being yelled at by Linus. :) Just saying.
regards
Stefan Schmidt
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wpan" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
