Re: RFC: ipw3945

[Kel Modderman <kelmo@kanotixguide.org>]

On Sunday 12 November 2006 21:17, Loïc Minier wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 12, 2006, Daniel Baumann wrote:
> > I don't want to have ipw* build with kernel-headers, but with iee80211
> > extra package.
>
>  Argh!
>
> > There are basically two reasons for this:
> >   0. Currently the ieee80211 headers in mainline are recent enough to
> >      allow ipw* compiled against it. This may change again in
> >      future, hence I compile them all the time against ieee80211.
> >   1. The ipw3945 package as it is now is anyway just a "temporary"
> >      package, because once it gets merged in mainline, the majority of
> >      users are going to use it there.
> >      After the merge into mainline, the ipw3945 is usefull for people
> >      which do want newer ipw* drivers with normal, non development
> >      kernels. From this time on, ieee80211 is required anyway.
>
>  This is all *very* hypothetical.  In fact, I believe the exact
>  contrary: ieee80211 itself should be merged into the mainline, and
>  ipw3945 will continue to build against linux-headers in all cases, and
>  perhaps against ieee80211 by cheer luck.  From what I understood,
>  there are competing wireless stacks being merged into the mainline
>  slowly, so would I be Intel, I would track the mainline.
>
>  Both of your reasons certainly do not apply to etch, so perhaps these
>  questions should be considered post-etch?
>
>  It strikes me that you insist on depending on ieee80211 for
>  hypothetical reasons when: 1) this package was removed from testing 2)
>  the packaging is a mess, which makes it hard to e.g. support
>  Xen-Vserver kernel headers 3) it works like a charm without!  :-)

Nobody has yet mentioned that ~11 other in-kernel modules are (as of 2.6.18) 
intimately related to the ieee80211 stack provided by the same linux source 
tree:
	airo
	atmel
	bcm43xx
	hostap
	ipw2100
	ipw2200
	orinico
	ray_cs
	wl3501
	zd1201
	zd1211rw

Any user of a ipw3945 package that enforces the use of an entirely new 
ieee80211 stack also forfeits the opportunity to use those modules mentioned 
above. It is entirely feasible a user has both a ipw3945 mini-pci and a 
zd1211rw usb wlan that they would like to use at different times.

Moreover, for people involved with custom debian distributions, it is not good 
for hardware support to have one fancy new module depending on an ieee80211 
stack that renders 11 other wifi modules useless.

Kel.