Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751230AbWJDXfF (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 19:35:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751234AbWJDXfE (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 19:35:04 -0400 Received: from THUNK.ORG ([69.25.196.29]:10677 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751230AbWJDXfA (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 19:35:00 -0400 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 19:29:39 -0400 From: Theodore Tso To: Jean Tourrilhes Cc: Linus Torvalds , "John W. Linville" , Jeff Garzik , Lee Revell , Alessandro Suardi , Norbert Preining , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, johannes@sipsolutions.net Subject: Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing Message-ID: <20061004232939.GA19647@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Tso , Jean Tourrilhes , Linus Torvalds , "John W. Linville" , Jeff Garzik , Lee Revell , Alessandro Suardi , Norbert Preining , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, johannes@sipsolutions.net References: <20061003180543.GD23912@tuxdriver.com> <4522A9BE.9000805@garzik.org> <20061003183849.GA17635@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <4522B311.7070905@garzik.org> <20061003214038.GE23912@tuxdriver.com> <20061004181032.GA4272@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <20061004185903.GA4386@bougret.hpl.hp.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20061004185903.GA4386@bougret.hpl.hp.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@thunk.org X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on thunker.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1923 Lines: 42 On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 11:59:03AM -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote: > That's exactly what it hinges on. What is your criteria for > removing the old ESSID API. My understanding was 6 months. Just to make it clear. The current practice is that 6 months is the _minimum_, after an extensive discussion on LKML and an understanding that costs of supporting both the old and the new interface outweighs the cost and pain to the user community of removing the old interface. Then after there is an agrement on how long the deprecation window will be (and sometimes it is negotiated to be longer than six months), it is documented in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt But it's never been the case that after six months, we can remove a feature just because we feel like it, or it's slightly more convenient to programmers at the cost of imposing pain on users, or at the cost of discouraging users from testing bleeding edge kernels. As others have pointed out, we have maintained old stat system call interfaces for over a ***decade***. So perhaps that's something to keep in mind as we start considering with the next generation wireless interface looks like, and whether it is sufficiently well defined and has enough forwards and backwards compatibility, both at the driver level and at the userspace level, so that we can avoid these sorts of problems going forward. Regards, - Ted P.S. Because of all of these changing interfaces, I *still* haven't been able to get wpa_supplicant working with LEAP so I can get wireless access to in IBM offices using my ipw3945 driver. I've tried, and failed. Sigh, I guess I'm not smart enough.... - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/