linux-kernel - [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable"

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Date:	Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:52:20 +0100 (CET)
From:	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
cc:	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
	"Grumbach, Emmanuel" <emmanuel.grumbach@...el.com>,
	"linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org" <linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"egrumbach@...il.com" <egrumbach@...il.com>,
	"peter@...leysoftware.com" <peter@...leysoftware.com>,
	"ilw@...ux.intel.com" <ilw@...ux.intel.com>,
	"Berg, Johannes" <johannes.berg@...el.com>,
	Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@...inger.net>
Subject: [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable"

This reverts commit 24a0aa212ee2dbe44360288684478d76a8e20a0a.

It's causing severe userspace breakage. Namely, all the utilities
from wireless-utils which are relying on CONFIG_WEXT (which means
tools like 'iwconfig', 'iwlist', etc) are not working anymore. There
is a 'iw' utility in newer wireless-tools, which is supposed to be
a replacement for all the "deprecated" binaries, but it's far away
from being massively adopted.

Please see [1] for example of the userspace breakage this is causing.

In addition to that, Larry Finger reports [2] that this patch is also
causing ipw2200 driver being impossible to build.

To me this clearly shows that CONFIG_WEXT is far, far away from being
"deprecated enough" to be removed.

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1857010
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/343688

Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>
---
 net/wireless/Kconfig | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/net/wireless/Kconfig b/net/wireless/Kconfig
index 22ba971..29c8675 100644
--- a/net/wireless/Kconfig
+++ b/net/wireless/Kconfig
@@ -175,7 +175,7 @@ config CFG80211_INTERNAL_REGDB
 	  Most distributions have a CRDA package.  So if unsure, say N.

 config CFG80211_WEXT
-	bool
+	bool "cfg80211 wireless extensions compatibility"
 	depends on CFG80211
 	select WEXT_CORE
 	help
-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs
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