netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next] eth: remove neterion/vxge

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Message-ID: <Yr7/UwsV4mqg0I5t@nanopsycho>
Date:   Fri, 1 Jul 2022 16:06:11 +0200
From:   Jiri Pirko <jiri@...nulli.us>
To:     David Lamparter <equinox@...c24.net>
Cc:     Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        corbet@....net, linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] eth: remove neterion/vxge

Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 03:17:32PM CEST, equinox@...c24.net wrote:
>[culled Cc:]
>
>On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 12:34:13PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 06:42:34AM CEST, kuba@...nel.org wrote:
>> >The last meaningful change to this driver was made by Jon in 2011.
>> >As much as we'd like to believe that this is because the code is
>> >perfect the chances are nobody is using this hardware.
>> 
>> Hmm, I can understand what for driver for HW that is no longer
>> developed, the driver changes might be very minimal. The fact that the
>> code does not change for years does not mean that there are users of
>> this NIC which this patch would break :/
>
>As a "reference datapoint", I'm a user that was affected by the removal
>of the Mellanox SwitchX-2 driver about a year ago.  But that was a bit

You could not be. There was really no functionality implemented in
switchx2 driver. I doubt you used 32x40G port switch with slow-path
forwarding through kernel with total max bandwidth of like 1-2G for the
whole switch :)


>different since the driver was apparently rather incomplete (I don't
>know the details, was still messing around to even get things going.)
>
>(FWIW my use case is in giving old hardware a second life, in this case
>completely throwing away the PowerPC control board from Mellanox SX6000
>series switches and replacing it with a new custom CPU board...  I might
>well be the only person interested in that driver.
>
>> Isn't there some obsoletion scheme globally applied to kernel device
>> support? I would expect something like that.
>
>I have the same question - didn't see any such policy but didn't look
>particularly hard.  But would like to avoid putting time into making
>something work just to have the kernel driver yanked shortly after :)
>
>
>-David