Re: Current status of rt2800usb and staging/rt2870

[Thomas Fjellstrom <tfjellstrom@shaw.ca>]

On Tue October 13 2009, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 October 2009 22:15:40 Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 21:21 +0200, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 13 October 2009 20:17:47 Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday 13 October 2009, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> > > > > On Tuesday 13 October 2009 17:52:52 Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> > > > > > I am going to merge rt2800pci soon as well and after that I'll
> > > > > > send a patch
> > > > >
> > > > > Great, I've been waiting for this for a long time.
> > > > >
> > > > > > to remove all Ralink drivers from the staging tree.
> > > > >
> > > > > Till new drivers obtain support for all hardware currently covered
> > > > > by the unified staging drivers the latter shouldn't be removed as
> > > > > they serve well their role as a temporary solution allowing real
> > > > > Linux users to user their real hardware and as a reference material
> > > > > for developers willing to work on adding the missing bits to new
> > > > > drivers.
> > > >
> > > > The rt2800pci and rt2800usb drivers cover support for
> > > > rt2860/rt2870/rt3070 devices, which are present as individual drivers
> > > > in the staging tree. So far it only managed
> > >
> > > There are no longer individual drivers.
> > >
> > > Instead there is one shared source code and two device drivers:
> > >
> > > - rt2860 covering RT2860 and RT3090 devices
> > >
> > > - rt2870 covering RT2870 and RT3070 devices
> > >
> > > In comparison rt2800usb currently lacks RT3070 support and rt2800pci's
> > > RT3090 support is basic at best (not to mention that it didn't work for
> > > RT2860 last time that I tried)..
> > >
> > > > to confuse developers which wanted to work on Ralink support, so I
> > > > haven't found
> > >
> > > I bet they are truly grateful for being shown "the one and only way"..
> >
> > There *is* only one way: mac80211.  If the driver is softmac, but does
> > not use mac82011, then it *is* the wrong way.  We will not have multiple
> > 802.11 stacks in the mainstream kernel.  If a softmac driver uses
> > mac80211, hey, that's great!  Lets add it!
> 
> Nobody never ever suggested merging Ralink drivers as they are into
> kernel proper.
> 
> > If it doesn't, then that driver needs to be updated to use mac80211.
> > Period.
> >
> > > > a benefit for having those drivers in the staging tree yet. But I am
> > > > sure there are plenty
> > >
> > > I was able to use my Eee 901 successfully with them for a last year and
> > > I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only.  I understand my sin now -- I
> > > should have had help in fixing the proper and clean code before using
> > > my hardware.. [*]
> >
> > That's nice, and everyone appreciates the work that you've done.  Nobody
> > can tell you what to work on, but it would be nice to get more people
> > working on the *mac80211* versions of the various drivers.  Imagine how
> > much better rt2x00 would be if all the effort that had gone into cleanup
> > up the ralink vendor drivers had instead gone into making rt2x00 work on
> > the new hardware.  Then you'd have cfg80211 support, background
> > scanning, etc all for free with no effort on your part.
> 
> No effort, right.  Debugging things is the hardest part of any project..
> 
> > Maybe it would have taken 6 months longer to get good support for your
> > hardware but at least the work would have a future.  But now we're stuck
> 
> You miss one tiny and irrelevant detail.  Until the work is finished
> I cannot use the hardware and real testers/users are using the vendor
> driver anyway for the simple fact that it exists and works.
> 
> > in a situation where either:
> >
> > 1) the vendor driver never gets converted to cfg80211/mac80211, and
> > stays in staging forever, or finally gets booted out of staging because
> > nobody is working on converting it to mac80211.  mac80211/cfg80211 is a
> > hard requirement for being an accepted wireless driver.  And drivers do
> > have a shelf-life in staging.
> >
> > 2) the vendor driver starts getting converted to use mac80211.  But I
> > would argue that a better use of *anyone's* time is to make rt2x00
> > better, instead of porting the ralink vendor drivers to mac80211.  It
> > would probably take less time to fix up rt2x00 for new hardware than to
> > port the ralink vendor drivers to mac80211.
> 
> Nobody is saying anything about porting the vendor drivers to mac80211.
> 
> 3) After the vendor driver gets cleaned up to the point that people are
> able to make any sense out of it the missing bits will get added to rt2x00.
> Several months later (after all current users are happy with the improved
> drivers) the old drivers will be removed from staging..
> 
> > > > of people who like the idea of having the original Ralink drivers
> > > > inside the staging tree, so they can continue debugging that, so I
> > > > won't talk about the staging downsides further.
> > >
> > > Well, it would be much more productive if people concentrate on
> > > improving _their_ projects and looking at downsides of _their_ code
> > > instead of going around and looking at _obvious_ downsides of other
> > > people's projects.
> > >
> > >
> > > [*] [Slightly off-topic but it shows the same problem with the
> > > approach]
> > >
> > > I now also see why some distributions keep pushing some known
> > > non-working things on their users (Fedora maintainers -- I'm talking to
> > > you), the best example is PulseAudio -- it simply doesn't work reliably
> > > even on modern hardware and/or using all scheduler tricks (it seems
> > > that making Linux into full RT OS is a prerequisite for fixing latency
> > > issues observed)..
> >
> > Pulseaudio works for many, many people.  The most productive use of your
> 
> Yeah, I trust you on both points..
> 
> > time here is to file a bug report with the specific details of your
> > audio chipset, let upstream diagnose whether it's a Pulseaudio-specific
> > problem, a codec driver problem, or an ALSA problem.
> 
> Right..
> 
> I see no point BTW -- time make proper bug-report is much bigger than
> throwing in few local hacks and since my experience with upstream so far
> was that my bug-reports end up in some black-hole I deal with issues in
> the most pragmatic and productive for everybody way..
> 
> > You can wait until the cows come home to deploy new technology, and then
> > of course you'll still have to fix up all the bugs because you waited
> > too long and nobody was testing it, or you can deploy new technology
> > that works for most people and fix those bugs much earlier.  Release
> > early, release often.  The tricky thing is how early.
> 
> It was new technology in F8 days..  It was included in F9 (released on
> 13th May 2008) and the current rawhide is still broken (no chance it will
> get fixed for F12)..  Getting stereo sound to play skip-lessly on standard
> AC97 or HDA cards on a freshly installed system is impossible..

Really? I don't have any problems with HDA audio on any of my systems. Ok, 
well I used to see some strange storm of intel_hda errors come from one of my  
systems, but its very rare, and a newer kernel probably fixed it.

> Other distributions are really not that much better (to be honest with
> Fedora it is the bleeding edge by definition) as their mode of operations
> sometimes consists of copying features (regardless of the quality and
> current state) from other distributions just for the sake of to not staying
> behind eventually..
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-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom@shaw.ca