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Date:      Fri, 9 Mar 2018 09:44:52 -0600
From:      Kyle Evans <kevans@freebsd.org>
To:        "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@freebsd.org>
Cc:        svn-src-stable@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org,  src-committers <src-committers@freebsd.org>, svn-src-stable-11@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r330451 - in stable/11/sys: dev/iwm dev/otus dev/usb/wlan net80211
Message-ID:  <CACNAnaFc9tJGEodq90f2BsDykXigWLRQGL9rCLyuv98B%2BHCGNw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <201803091528.w29FSabK065005@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
References:  <20180309110240.GA77718@FreeBSD.org> <201803091528.w29FSabK065005@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>

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On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 9:28 AM, Rodney W. Grimes
<freebsd@pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 07, 2018 at 02:53:49PM -0800, Eitan Adler wrote:
>> > On 7 March 2018 at 09:37, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote:
>> > > ...
>> > > I suspect many of these changes for iwm, etc. are all intertwined
>> > > so I'm not sure if you can leave out individual ones.
>> >
>> > Possibly. I do have iwm working on my laptop though. I also know of
>> > one open PR assigned to me w.r.t. a model I don't own. I'll be
>> > addressing it some time this week.
>>
>> I often have mixed feelings when I see lots of similar changes (i.e.
>> that make up for better hardware support, esp. on a laptop) MFCed.
>> I'd rather see laptop users run -CURRENT and leave -STABLE branches
>> for very conservative (server?) users who can't/don't want to afford
>> the risks of running -CURRENT or require ABI stability in a really
>> long run, rather than binge-merging things. :-)
>>
>> By default it should be -CURRENT all over; it's a very good thing
>> that we as a Project ourselves are doing this as part of our own
>> dogfood eating strategy.
>
> As a data point just last night a person came into #freebsd irc
> channel with a none working wireless nic on a desktop, he was
> attemtping to use a Realteak RTL8192EU on 11.1-RELEASE.
>
> Someone had already told him to try urtwn driver, which in
> -current is the right driver and supports this device.
>
> It did not work for him.  This is about when I came in to the
> discussion, and helped to confirm that -current did infact
> have support for this device, and that this supported had
> existed in -current for 16 months, and that this support
> would not be a simple grab a couple driver files and build
> it on 11.1.
>
> The commit to add this support involves 46 files, which 18
> of are new files.
>
> My feelings are if this driver has been in -current for
> 16 months why is it NOT in -stable yet?  I know part of
> the answer "its not a simple merge".  But as a project
> this is egg on our face.  We can merge a new very complicated
> change to a our boot code, within a few months (thank you
> kevans for that work), but we can not merge back a
> device driver in 16?
>

I had the same questions- this exact same person had hopped over to
#freebsd-wifi and I had walked through this same process, identifying
it as "not MFC-able" at this point because so many commits having been
left un-merged prior to it. I've already recently gone through the fun
of catching up on one and a half years worth of unmerged work in
stand, I'm not really prepared to do it again quite yet.

It felt pretty bad having to tell him that his only option here was to
either hop on -CURRENT + rtwn(4) or grab a stable/11 supported NIC-
especially since stable/11 is still supposed to be supported for
another three (3!) years, and I had to leave before I could help him
walk through getting it setup on -CURRENT properly.



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