Subject: Re: [PATCH] mac80211: give warning if building w/out rate ctrl
 algorithm
From: Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>
To: Andres Salomon <dilinger@collabora.co.uk>
Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
	Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
In-Reply-To: <20100216165004.010d2c4b@droptest.queued.net>
References: <20100216161656.42079d77@droptest.queued.net>
	 <1266355279.8849.24.camel@localhost.localdomain>
	 <20100216165004.010d2c4b@droptest.queued.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:01:39 -0800
Message-ID: <1266361299.8849.26.camel@localhost.localdomain>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

Hi Andres,

> > > I discovered that if EMBEDDED=y, one can accidentally build a
> > > mac80211 stack and drivers w/ no rate control algorithm.  For
> > > drivers like RTL8187 that don't supply their own RC algorithms,
> > > this will cause ieee80211_register_hw to fail (making the driver
> > > unusable).
> > > 
> > > This will tell kconfig to provide a warning if no rate control
> > > algorithms have been selected.  That'll at least warn the user;
> > > users that know that their drivers supply a rate control algorithm
> > > can safely ignore the warning, and those who don't know (or who
> > > expect to be using multiple drivers) can select a default RC
> > > algorithm.
> > 
> > this is not an acceptable policy. You are generating false positives
> > now for drivers that have been fine before.
> > 
> 
> Unacceptable how?  It's a warning, not a requirement.  It's
> telling the user to double-check their config.

and why not either whitelist drivers with their own rate control or have
the ones without rate control depend on a selection. You can't really
expect all users to know which driver comes with rate control and which
doesn't.

Regards

Marcel