Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 07:28:36 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> To: Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@freebsd.org> Cc: Eitan Adler <eadler@freebsd.org>, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>, 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: <201803091528.w29FSabK065005@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <20180309110240.GA77718@FreeBSD.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 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? As a semi- regular visit to the FreeBSD irc help room, I try to go there once a month and spend 8 hours helping people with any problem them might have, I see this lack of driver support in stable/ regularly. On my last visit it was the iwn driver adding 8565 support, I reached out to GNN who did the -current work, again a significant time ago, the commit had a MFC: 1 month in it. George replied to me that it turned out to be non-trivial to merge due to other dependencies. I procurred an offer from the reporting person to test patches if I could get them put togeather, and he accepted. George agreed to review these patches for me. A few days later eadler merged a good deal of code in this area. I informed George of concerns about that and left it lie. Jhb stepped in and clearly identified abi breakage, which I believe has been reverted. I have made an offer to eadler to pass my tester of the Intel 8565 on to him, which I have received no reply from him, but from someone else that said they would test it "this weekend" I do not know if stable/11 is in a state that this driver should or should not work now. Regards, -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@freebsd.org
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201803091528.w29FSabK065005>