Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

From: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
	Philipp Hortmann <philipp.g.hortmann@gmail.com>,
	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>, Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Nicolas Ferre <nicolas.ferre@microchip.com>,
	Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>,
	Claudiu Beznea <claudiu.beznea@tuxon.dev>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>,
	"David S . Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	linux-staging@lists.linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 11:24:40 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <56fe16bf-3fc9-49f9-9646-c236b885afa5@lwfinger.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <c8f43e1b-aed1-4b45-ba7c-d896ff66dfa7@app.fastmail.com>

On 10/13/23 10:36, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> At the moment, I'd suggest focusing on the drivers that still use wext (git grep 
> -w iw_handler_def drivers), if we can show that rtl8192e, rtl8712 or ks7010 have 
> been broken for a while, removing those would help with removing wext altogether.

I do not know about the the others, but rtl8712 is still in use according to the 
flow of questions I see on a GitHub repo that I maintain.

There has been some recent effort to convert rtl8192e to use cfg/nl/mac80211. 
That one is problematic as it has the same PCI_ID as RTL8192SE, but the drivers 
differ. Note the special code in the probe routine of 
drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/rtl8192se to detect if the wrong one has 
triggered the routine. That code should also be in the probe routine for 
RTL8192E with the test negated. I have both devices, but it has been a long time 
since I actually used either of them. I also have an rtl8712 device, thus I 
should be available for testing.

Larry