netdev - Re: [PATCH net v5 2/3] net: usb: ax88179_178a: add USB device driver for config selection

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Message-ID: <3cb55160-8cca-471a-a707-188c7b411e34@suse.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 11:13:29 +0200
From: Oliver Neukum <oneukum@...e.com>
To: Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
 Michal Pecio <michal.pecio@...il.com>
Cc: yicongsrfy@....com, andrew+netdev@...n.ch, davem@...emloft.net,
 edumazet@...gle.com, kuba@...nel.org, linux-usb@...r.kernel.org,
 netdev@...r.kernel.org, pabeni@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH net v5 2/3] net: usb: ax88179_178a: add USB device driver
 for config selection

On 20.10.25 18:59, Alan Stern wrote:

> Another possibility is simply to give up on handling all of this
> automatically in the kernel.  The usb_modeswitch program certainly
> should be capable of determining when a USB network device ought to
> switch to a different configuration; that's very similar to the things
> it does already.  Maybe userspace is the best place to implement this
> stuff.

That would make usb_modeswitch or yet a new udev component mandatory.
That is the exact opposite of what we would like to achieve.

> Furthermore, with usb_modeswitch it's not at all uncommon to have some
> drivers bind momentarily before being kicked off.  People don't care
> about it very much, as long it all happens reliably and automatically.

That is probably not wise in the long run. If the device whose driver
we kick off is a CD-ROM, nobody cares. If it is a network interface,
we'll have to deal with ugly cases like user space already having
sent a DHCP query when we kick the old driver off the interface.

	Regards
		Oliver