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

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Date:	Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:45:53 +0100
From:	Arend van Spriel <arend@...adcom.com>
To:	"Grumbach, Emmanuel" <emmanuel.grumbach@...el.com>
CC:	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
	"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: Re: [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable"

On 12/31/14 12:10, Grumbach, Emmanuel wrote:
>> On 12/30/14 23:52, Jiri Kosina wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> Hi Jiri,
>>
>> You mentioned in the discussion and I quote: "*If* wireless maintainers think
>> otherwise, I'll send a revert request to Linus for consideration.". However,
>> you did not wait for any response from the wireless maintainers nor from the
>> author of the patch you are reverting.
>> Seems like an overreaction to me though personally I do not disgree with the
>> revert itself.
>
> Not to mention the patch has already been applied on Linus's tree...

Water under the bridge. The thing with WEXT is that it will stay as is. 
So if tools like wicd want to support new features like P2P it will need 
to make the switch. I checked out wicd repo and found a number of 
iwconfig calls and they kick off wpa_supplicant with wext driver.

With libnl python support wicd could use nl80211 directly avoiding 
screen-scraping iw output, but it seems not included in distros.

Regards,
Arend

>>
>> Regards,
>> Arend
>>
>>> [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
>

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