Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2018 17:41:53 +0000 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org> To: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FCP-0101: Deprecating most 10/100 Ethernet drivers Message-ID: <20181004174153.GA88762@spindle.one-eyed-alien.net> In-Reply-To: <20181004172420.F08F5156E40C@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <20181003210516.GA71565@spindle.one-eyed-alien.net> <20181004172420.F08F5156E40C@mail.bitblocks.com>
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--gKMricLos+KVdGMg Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 10:24:13AM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Wed, 03 Oct 2018 21:05:16 -0000 Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org> wrot= e: > >=20 > > The current list of drivers slated for REMOVAL is: > > > > ae, bfe, bm, cs, dme, ed, ep, ex, fe, pcn, rl, sf, smc, sn, > > ste, tl, tx, txp, vx, wb, xe > > > > The current list of drivers that will STAY in the tree is: > > > > dc, ffec, fxpl, hme, le, sis, vr, xl >=20 > What is the disposition of drivers not on either list? They weren't considered and nothing changes unless someone points them and proposes some action. The document points out that USB devices were skipped. Not mentioned were NICs tied to specific architectures. > > 10 and 100 megabit Ethernet drivers are largely irrelevant today > > and we have a significant number of them in the tree. The ones that > > are no longer used and/or are not known to be working need to be > > removed due to the significant ongoing 'tax' on new development. >=20 > I don't understand why there is a "significant ongoing 'tax' > on new development" for old NICs. Can the internal MI<->MD > interface be evolved in the direction where the MD drivers for > old h/w "just work"? Or is it a hopeless task? I've touched every single Ethernet driver by hand multiple times in that past year in our research tree. We'll never know how much modernization isn't being done because it's a pain. iflib does reduce this cost, but conversion isn't trivial. We should work to migrate drivers that are used and stop wasting time on ones that aren't. -- Brooks --gKMricLos+KVdGMg Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJbtlDgAAoJEKzQXbSebgfAgdgH/iLB2J/7iIm7ZduA9TWd3EFG /qB3XxgIsJ3uLp3W7OlelHBqxX1+2CuWWfsqRueNbD9eTm25DwqTXeGqhF/u2j5p m9w3g3a0cOhqLUEEp0TgI3aKqBenNYA0KbDxoQUCFBf1e4NDpuSqw+g5gKhwrPbV VsNZTskw5joGV6AducvsHzg2qkvglUunt9xsqbE1jWlI3ktT1Hlwh+d46MZLAfLm 5w+zlWLRoN3heGCu29cKKWlBZEIjaZMoICJ+7Ga7BJjPIL7ce1BNU6YOw8opwDI5 eLft9HcpFLpcY5R5ndYuL6xboks9ME0xn7vTLZwzYVWT9BcPJCJ4U6n1OSarlTU= =Ejo8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --gKMricLos+KVdGMg--
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