Re: [PATCH] staging/octeon: Mark Ethernet driver as BROKEN

["gregkh@linuxfoundation.org" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 12:54:26AM +0000, Chris Packham wrote:
> Hi Greg & All,
> 
> On Mon, 2019-12-02 at 19:15 +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 09:36:20AM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > > On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 05:52:31PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 06:18:36AM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > > > > The code doesn't compile due to incompatible pointer errors
> > > > > such as
> > > > > 
> > > > > drivers/staging/octeon/ethernet-tx.c:649:50: error:
> > > > > 	passing argument 1 of 'cvmx_wqe_get_grp' from
> > > > > incompatible pointer type
> > > > > 
> > > > > This is due to mixing, for example, cvmx_wqe_t with 'struct
> > > > > cvmx_wqe'.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Unfortunately, one can not just revert the primary offending
> > > > > commit, as doing so
> > > > > results in secondary errors. This is made worse by the fact
> > > > > that the "removed"
> > > > > typedefs still exist and are used widely outside the staging
> > > > > directory,
> > > > > making the entire set of "remove typedef" changes pointless and
> > > > > wrong.
> > > > 
> > > > Ugh, sorry about that.
> > > > 
> > > > > Reflect reality and mark the driver as BROKEN.
> > > > 
> > > > Should I just delete this thing?  No one seems to be using it and
> > > > there
> > > > is no move to get it out of staging at all.
> > > > 
> > > > Will anyone actually miss it?  It can always come back of someone
> > > > does...
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > All it does is causing trouble and misguided attempts to clean it
> > > up.
> > > If anything, the whole thing goes into the wrong direction (declare
> > > a
> > > complete set of dummy functions just to be able to build the driver
> > > with COMPILE_TEST ? Seriously ?).
> > > 
> > > I second the motion to drop it. This has been in staging for 10
> > > years.
> > > Don't we have some kind of time limit for code in staging ? If not,
> > > should we ? If anyone really needs it, that person or group should
> > > really invest the time to get it out of staging for good.
> > 
> > 10 years?  Ugh, yes, it's time to drop the thing, I'll do so after
> > -rc1
> > is out.
> > 
> 
> As a long suffering Cavium MIPs customer could I request that this
> isn't dropped. I'll get someone here to take a look at fixing the build
> issues.
> 
> Given our platform isn't upstream I'm not sure that we'll be able to
> meet the criteria for getting it out of staging.
> 

Can't you push this onto Cavium as you are paying them for hardware and
support?

thanks,

greg k-h