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

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Message-ID: <Yr8rC9jXtoFbUIQ+@electric-eye.fr.zoreil.com>
Date:   Fri, 1 Jul 2022 19:12:43 +0200
From:   Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>
To:     Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
Cc:     davem@...emloft.net, netdev@...r.kernel.org, edumazet@...gle.com,
        pabeni@...hat.com, corbet@....net, jdmason@...zu.us,
        vburru@...vell.com, jiawenwu@...stnetic.com,
        linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] eth: remove neterion/vxge

Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org> :
> 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.

It was used with some success in 2017:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197881

> Because of the size of this driver there is a nontrivial maintenance
> cost to keeping this code around, in the last 2 years we're averaging
> more than 1 change a month. Some of which require nontrivial review
> effort, see commit 877fe9d49b74 ("Revert "drivers/net/ethernet/neterion/vxge:
> Fix a use-after-free bug in vxge-main.c"") for example.

vxge_remove() calls vxge_device_unregister().

vxge_device_unregister() does unregister_netdev() + ... + free_netdev().

vxge_remove() keeps using netdev_priv() pointer... :o/

Imho it is not nontrivial enough that top-level maintainers must handle it
but it is just mvho that maintainers handle too much low-value stuff.

Regarding the unused hardware side of the problem, it's a bit sad that
there still is no centralized base of interested users for a given piece
of hardware in 2022.

-- 
Ueimor