linux-kernel - Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing

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Message-ID: <20061004204718.GA4599@bougret.hpl.hp.com>
Date:	Wed, 4 Oct 2006 13:47:18 -0700
From:	Jean Tourrilhes <jt@....hp.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...l.org>
Cc:	"John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>,
	Lee Revell <rlrevell@...-job.com>,
	Alessandro Suardi <alessandro.suardi@...il.com>,
	Norbert Preining <preining@...ic.at>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	johannes@...solutions.net
Subject: Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 01:12:17PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> > 
> > 	Yes, this is precisely what we have been doing, the two APIs
> > have been working at the same time for more than 6 months.
> 
> In the kernel for any particular driver?
> 
> Or just in user-land?
> 
> There's a big difference.

	Both actually.
	I've slightly simplified the situation, because you may not
care for all the details, but if you want to know the gory details...
	It's all started with some kernel drivers changing the way
they handle ESSID. That was last January. So, in the kernel, you had
half the drivers doing the old way (NUL terminated), and half doing
the new way (not NUL terminated).
	I immediately asked to revert to the old way. All the Wireless
people were against me, and this mish-mash of API was kept (it was
public on netdev). At this point, nobody cared that userspace API was
broken and I was left cleaning up the mess.
	Of course, some part of the Wireless Tools did broke on the
new API (I had bug reports), so I had to push new version of Wireless
Tools. And I took this opportunity to finish moving over the API to
the new way.

	Sometime breaking userspace APIs is perfectly OK, while
sometimes it's not. You just have to make sure that Linus does not
hear about it, I guess ;-)

> 			Linus

	Have fun...

	Jean
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