[RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Jean Tourrilhes]

	Hi,

	(I'm not on the Linux kernel mailing list)

	The IrDA stack in Linux is non functional and has some major
critical bugs :
                        http://linux24.sourceforge.net/
	Not only it doesn't work, but it can crash your kernel fast.

	Most might wonder why the IrDA stack is in such state of
disrepair. Is there no maintainers and nobody who cares ?
	The truth is that every 2 month, Dag Brattli, the official
maintainer of the IrDA stack (see MAINTAINERS), collect all our
patches and send the latest official Linux-IrDA patch to Linus.
	And every time the patch never materialise in the Linux
kernel. Of course, Dag never receive any answer, so doesn't know why
his patches are going directly to /dev/null.
	As we fix more bugs, the official IrDA patch get growing and
growing. The patch that Dag sent last week to Linus was 320k. It has
slowly accumulated over one year :-(

	On the other hand, what never cease to amaze me is that some
patches to the IrDA code gets into the kernel. Some of those patches
make things better, some make things worse. Those patches certainly
don't come from Dag or any of the most active Linux-IrDA hacker, and
none of us see those patches in advance so that we get a chance to
comment on them and test them.
	I guess that some people have trouble reading the MAINTAINERS
file :-( Or maybe there is another maintainer for the IrDA stack and
none of us knows about it.


	I think for us the only solution is to ignose what's happening
in the 2.4.X kernel and have Dag maintaining Linux-IrDA separate from
the kernel. I don't see why Dag should take the effort to send regular
patch to Linus if they get ignored.
	In other words, the chances to have IrDA working in kernel 2.4
are *very* slim at this point.
	So, if people are interested in IrDA and want to use it, they
should suscribe to the Linux-IrDA mailing list and can ask me the
latest patch (Dag is now too discouraged). We will put it in the usual
place on Sourceforge...

	I hope it clarify a few things...

	Jean
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Jean Tourrilhes]

On Tue, Nov 07, 2000 at 08:24:38PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> Take a look at
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9908.0/0669.html  This
> happened with ISDN.  Slightly different situation, but similar.

	I'm familiar with that. The *BIG* difference is that Dag has
always sent his patch to Linus from the very start, when it was still
small, whereas ISDN did stay on their patch from a long time.

> IMHO Dag should send break up his patches into small chunks, and feed
> those to Linus, with an explanation of each chunk.  That's what
> everybody else does... :)

	If you can break up stuff that has accumulated over one year,
please tell me so. Most of the original patches have been lost in the
mist of time. We could send it file by file, but that would give some
interesting results ;-)
	There is also a tradeoff between having the maintainer doing
the filtering to make sure that what's get checked in is safe and
getting junk in the kernel. With IrDA, Dag make sure to test and
integrate each patch before sending it to Linus, which of course make
bigger chunks. Also, some of the contribution on the IrDA mailing list
are big chunks of patches by themselves.
	Anyway, Linus should read the Linux-IrDA mailing list if he
really want to keep up with the gory details ;-)

> 	Jeff

	Ciao...

	Jean
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Russell King]

Jean Tourrilhes writes:
> 	If you can break up stuff that has accumulated over one year,
> please tell me so. Most of the original patches have been lost in the
> mist of time. We could send it file by file, but that would give some
> interesting results ;-)

<rant mode=on>
That doesn't work either ;(  Some of Dag's patches were from me, and I
have even tried sending Linus small self-contained obviously correct patches
for IrDA, but they just don't go in, and, dispite me asking several times
for an explaination why they are not, I've never received an answer.

Its almost although Linus is no longer interested in kernel support for IrDA.
I really don't know why Linus doesn't drop the whole IrDA stuff out of the
kernel if he's not willing to let people maintain it.

The latest changes to the initcall stuff in 2.4.0-test10 *did* affect IrDA,
but now every IrDA patch out there to get it working requires fixing up.

Linus, can we PLEASE have an explaination as to what is going on with IrDA?
<rant mode=off>
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |         Russell King        rmk@arm.linux.org.uk      --- ---
  | | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html   /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |                                                     ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Michael Rothwell]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> >
> > Linus, can you post reasons why you keep ignoring^W rejecting the IrDA
> > patch?
> 
> Basically, whatever Alan rants, I've not seen the patches all that many
> times at all.
> 
> Also, I've never seen much in the form of explanation, and at least the
> last patch I saw just the first screenful was so off-putting that I just
> went "Ok, I have real bugs to fix, I don't need this crap".
> 
>                 Linus


Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
patch is never accepted -- could you clarify? They're apparently putting
a lot of effort into writing and fixing IrDA for Linux, and have become
very discouraged at the lack of feedback. "Crap" the code may be, but it
seems like it would be a good idea to at least say something substantive
about why their code keeps getting rejected.
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > Also, I've never seen much in the form of explanation, and at least the
> > last patch I saw just the first screenful was so off-putting that I just
> > went "Ok, I have real bugs to fix, I don't need this crap".
>
> Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?

There's one _major_ reason why things never get accepted:

 CVS trees

I'm not fed patches. I'm force-fed big changes every once in a while. I
don't like it.

I like it even less when the very first screen of a patch is basically a
stupid change that implies that somebody calls ioctl's from interrupts.

When I get a big patch like that, where the very first screen is
bletcherous, what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm not going to waste my
time on people who cannot send multiple small and well-defined patches,
and who send be big, ugly, "non-maintained" (as far as I'm concerned)
patches.

I'm surprised Alan rants about this. He knows VERY well how I work, and is
(along with Jeff Garzik and Randy Dunlap) one of the people who are very
good at sending me 25 separate patches with explanations of what they do.

Basically, if you send me a big patch with tons of changes, how the hell
DO you expect me to answer them? Does anybodt really expect me to go
through ten thousand lines of code that I do not know, and comment on it?
Obviously not, as anybody with an ounce of sense would see.

So what choice do I have? Apply them blindly?

Quite frankly, I'd rather have a few people hate me deeply than apply
stuff I don't like. If I just start blindly applying big patches, I can
avoid nasty discussions. But I'd rather have people flame me. Maybe some
day people will instead start sending me smaller commented patches.

I'm NOT going to do other peoples work for them. If people can't be
bothered to send me well-specified patches ESPECIALLY now that we're close
to 2.4.x, then I can't be bothered to apply them,

Live with it. Hat eme all you like. I do not care. Th ething I care about
is not letting too much crap through unchecked.

		Linus

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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> 
> Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?

Just to clarify.

The ONLY message from the IrDA people I've gotten during the last few
weeks has been a SINGLE email from Dag Brattli, with a 330kB patch.

The whole, full, unabridged explanation for those 330kB of patches:

>> Hello Linus,
>> 
>> Here is the latest IrDA patch for Linux-2.4.0-test10. 
>> 
>> Short summary: 
>> 
>> o Fixes IrDA in 2.4
>> o Touches _no_ other files. 
>> 
>> Please apply! 
>> 
>> Best regards
>> 
>> Dag Brattli

That's it.

ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 

10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
anything but

	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"

and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
claim should have been applied? Nada.

Get a grip. 

		Linus

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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Russell King]

Linus Torvalds writes:
> ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
> have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 
> 
> 10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
> anything but
> 
> 	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"
> 
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.
> 
> Get a grip. 

Linus,

You know full well that I have sent you *small* self-contained obviously
correct patches since 2.4.0-test2 onwards.  Why haven't these been applied
when the only argument against it is "ONE huge patch"?
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |         Russell King        rmk@arm.linux.org.uk      --- ---
  | | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html   /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |                                                     ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status, Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Dag Brattli]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3611 bytes --]

Hi Linus,

I agree that the latest patch wasn't good about specifying its contents. 
But in fact, the 26th of august I sent you a mail which was much better
(but then your mailbox crashed or something!?) Since you hadn't applied 
any previoius patches (and not even the  patches from Russell), I felt that you
wasn't to interested about IrDA (even if Transmeta is a member of IrDA these 
days ;-) or didn't have time to look thru them. So that's the reason for the 
very short description. I'm sorry about that!

I've watched the ISDN discussion a year ago, so I already knew what you
felt about such large patches. The truth is that I've been very busy with my 
new job, and haven't had much time to maintain the Linux-IrDA project, so 
those large patches was the best I could do, and it's correct that I haven't  
actually flooded you with patches the last 6 months.

But we should anyway discuss what to do with IrDA support in Linux 2.4. 
The state of the current IrDA code in 2.4 is very bad and probably not 
working at all. The latest patch may have some bad code as well but at 
least things are working (and Linux isn't the OS which is best known for it's
beautiful code anyway). It will eventually be fixed, once people start 
complaining!

Some options:

1) Split up the large patch and fix the things you didn't like, submit them
with better discription. But then It's probably to late anyway for 2.4 (even if 
the 2.4-test series is not the most stable stuff I've tried). Is it to late for this?

2) Remove IrDA from the kernel, and we'll go back to using CVS and 
make our own package (like PCMCIA and IrDA was before they got 
into the kernel. At least PCMCIA used to work back then ;-)

3) Just apply the stuff!?! Look at Jean's mail for description of the changes.

-- Dag

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 23:26:34 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> > 
> > Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> > writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> > patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?
> 
> Just to clarify.
> 
> The ONLY message from the IrDA people I've gotten during the last few
> weeks has been a SINGLE email from Dag Brattli, with a 330kB patch.
> 
> The whole, full, unabridged explanation for those 330kB of patches:
> 
> >> Hello Linus,
> >> 
> >> Here is the latest IrDA patch for Linux-2.4.0-test10. 
> >> 
> >> Short summary: 
> >> 
> >> o Fixes IrDA in 2.4
> >> o Touches _no_ other files. 
> >> 
> >> Please apply! 
> >> 
> >> Best regards
> >> 
> >> Dag Brattli
> 
> That's it.
> 
> ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
> have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 
> 
> 10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
> anything but
> 
> 	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"
> 
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.
> 
> Get a grip. 
> 
> 		Linus
> 
> 
> 
----
Dag Brattli,                       Mail:  dagb@fast.no
Senior Systems Engineer            Web:   http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA         Phone: +47 776 96 688
P.O. Box 1126                      Fax:   +47 776 96 689
NO-9261 Tromsø, NORWAY             Cell:  +47 924 05 388

Try FAST Search: http://www.alltheweb.com/

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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Some options:
> 
> 1) Split up the large patch and fix the things you didn't like, submit them
> with better discription. But then It's probably to late anyway for 2.4 (even if 
> the 2.4-test series is not the most stable stuff I've tried). Is it
> to late for this?

Probably not. Get tytso to agree that broken IrDA is critical bug,
split patches, and see them accepted.

> 2) Remove IrDA from the kernel, and we'll go back to using CVS and 
> make our own package (like PCMCIA and IrDA was before they got 
> into the kernel. At least PCMCIA used to work back then ;-)

Do not do that, please.

> 3) Just apply the stuff!?! Look at Jean's mail for description of
> the changes.
								Pavel

-- 
I'm pavel@ucw.cz. "In my country we have almost anarchy and I don't care."
Panos Katsaloulis describing me w.r.t. patents at discuss@linmodems.org
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Michael Rothwell]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.

Did you say that to them? I'm not saying you're wrong; but did you tell
them that? It might make your life easier if you make a faq on "how to
get your code accepted" and another on "how to get your code rejected."
Then you could send people off to read those, and maybe even site a
"violates #6" or whatever.

> Get a grip.

Help a little.

-M
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Jean Tourrilhes]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2000 at 12:04:05PM +0000, Dag Brattli wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It was implemented this way because the IrDA device drivers are implemented
> like normal network device drivers and didn't want to mess with struct netdevice
> in order to change the speed of the driver. I decided to use ioctl since it had to
> be possible to do this from user-space (sniffers) as well as from the IrDA stack. 
> The only thing the IrDA stack knows about is the netdevice. Some frames we
> receive will trigger a speed change which we must handle from within the
> stack (so it's inside the bh and not actually in the "hard" interrupt)
> 
> What do you suggest I do?
> 
> 1. Add a change_speed() function to struct netdevice
> 2. Add a protocol specific pointer to struct netdevice
> 3. Embed the speed in skb->cb and send down empty frames
>     when I want to change the speed without transmitting anything.
> 4. Anything else?

	If somebody tell us which is the "right way", I'll try to code
that ASAP. We take any feedback very seriously ;-)
	I personally would go with #1, because "struct netdevice" is
full of protocol specific stuff anyway... And if we do our job right,
it can be reused for other stuff.

	Any comments ?

> -- Dag

	Jean
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