linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Revert "ipw2200: select CFG80211

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Message-ID: <1420324124.9624.60.camel@x220>
Date:	Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:28:44 +0100
From:	Paul Bolle <pebolle@...cali.nl>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Marcel Holtmann <marcel@...tmann.org>,
	Stanislav Yakovlev <stas.yakovlev@...il.com>,
	Kalle Valo <kvalo@...eaurora.org>,
	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>,
	linux-wireless <linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org>,
	Network Development <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Revert "ipw2200: select CFG80211_WEXT"

On Sat, 2015-01-03 at 10:07 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Marcel Holtmann <marcel@...tmann.org> wrote:
> >
> > why would you revert this? It is obviously the correct change to actually select CFG80211_WEXT.
> 
> I don't know about obvious, but yeah, I think the select in this case
> is actually the better idea anyway.

Obviously it wasn't obvious to me!

My reasoning was that the "ipw2200: select CFG80211_WEXT" commit was
_solely_ a workaround for the breakage introduced by that other patch.
And since that one is now reverted the workaround wasn't needed anymore.

Besied, I thought we try to avoid select-ing symbols that can also be
set manually. As that makes it more likely to trigger circular
dependency problems in the kconfig tools, doesn't it?

> We could make the CFG80211_WEXT help message be very negative so that
> people aren't encouraged to select it even if they can, but then if
> they need the ipw driver it gets selected because of that. Because the
> ipw driver is probably the more important of the two if you just
> happen to have old hardware but are upgrading yout software (and
> anybody who recompiles their own kernel is obviously doing the
> latter).

Side note: am I correct in thinking that there's some successor to
CFG80211_WEXT and that the ipw2200 driver could, at least in theory, be
ported to that successor? (ipw2200 hardware appears to be a bit old, so
probably no one would care enough to actually do that.)
net/wireless/kconfig doesn't mention anything like that, so probably I'm
just confused.

Paul Bolle

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