[Prism54-devel] documentation used for prism54 driver authoring

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On 6/15/05, Samuel Ortiz <samuel.ortiz at nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi Jean-Baptiste,
> 
> On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, ext Jean-Baptiste Note wrote:
> 
> > > I understand the project is now abandoned, has it been superseded by
> > > the driver included in the kernel? Is this based on the source from
> > > this project, or is it the same project?
> >
> > I'd like clarification on this one, too, because i've got a ton of
> > patches that i'd like to see included in the kernel eventually, because
> > they seem to improve the driver for many people.
> I agree with that, but the problem is that they didn't even make it to the
> prism54 svn tree.

The project is not abandoned. Think of the project a success as the
prism54 driver is already in the stock kernel. In fact it is the only
802.11g driver on the stock kernel. The problems we have always faced
have been lack of support or documentation. We're at a point where the
final tasks left are a pain in the ass due to the lack of
documentation. An example is WPA support. I've added what I can and
have at least been able to get wpa_supplicant to read WPA IEs but
that's about it.

What we need now is just the final push. As for the problem in
commiting new patches this is just because I'm the only maintainer
left and if I take time off svn tree gets on hold. Jean -- you should
get svn access if you don't already. You should be able to commit by
now. If you don't have access let me know and I'll grant you access.

> > The project is *not* abandonned, there are huge improvements to be made
> > to the driver, and fullmac chips are still made and widely used in the
> > embedded market. But lack of documentation means we have to somewhat
> > guess some things. As was the case for proper WDS state change.
> WPA is an important missing piece as well. I'm working on it.

I actually don't see many cards still being sold with the fullmac
chipsets. I do agree WPA is the next big task. Samuel -- you seem
interested in working on this.. let's knock this out.

> 
> > The situation is obviously worse with softmac.
> >
> > Are you interested in doing some development ? -- i'll help as much as i
> > can, and maybe we can ask some kernel people about what we should do to
> > get the patches into the kernel. If anyone's listening...
> I think the "proper" way should be to have Luis accept or reject your
> patches and then send regular updates to kernel.org (probably Jeff Garzik
> in that case). If Luis doesn't have time/motivation for integrating
> patches to the SVN tree and then forwarding them upstream, then he should
> let us know and then we can work that out.

What I wanted was to complete at least WPA and WDS and then send
patches upstream for inclusion on netdev-2.6.  We should also see
how/when we can start adopting ieee80211 just as ipw driver has.

  Luis