Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:23:32 -0400 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Cc: Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <bu7cher@yandex.ru>, "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com>, "freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org" <freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: [rfc] removing the NDISulator Message-ID: <201310231023.32351.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <CAJ-VmomzydOD-M1oePMuqrgdBCFMTXKCZcGVwu%2BLFTnHTGg0Kw@mail.gmail.com> References: <5265878B.1050809@yandex.ru> <201310212146.r9LLkqZ1044966@fire.js.berklix.net> <CAJ-VmomzydOD-M1oePMuqrgdBCFMTXKCZcGVwu%2BLFTnHTGg0Kw@mail.gmail.com>
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On Monday, October 21, 2013 6:29:24 pm Adrian Chadd wrote: > The NDISulator is a crutch from a time when there wasn't _any_ real > alternative. > > There are plenty of alternatives now. What's lacking is desire and > person-power. But the datasheets are there, or the vendor code has been > released, or there's linux/otherbsd drivers. > > Leaving it in there is just delaying the inevitable - drivers need to be > fixed, ported, or reverse engineered. > > This is going to upset users in the same way that eliminating any other > transition/sideways compatibility layer upsets users. But as I said, the > path forward is fixing up the lack of stable drivers, not simply supporting > some crutch. > > If there are drivers that people absolutely need fixed then they should > stand up and say "hey, I really would like X to work better!" and then > follow it up with some encouraging incentives. Right now the NDISulator > lets people work _around_ this by having something that kind of works for > them but it doesn't improve our general driver / stack ecosystems. Eh, having taken a stab at porting the bwl blob already, I would strongly oppose removing NDIS. If you do that I will just stop using my netbook with a Broadcom part altogether as I wouldn't be able to use it to try to test bwl changes. The NDIS thing is a bit hackish, but it is quite useful for a lot of folks. -- John Baldwin
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