Return-path: Received: from mail-ob0-f173.google.com ([209.85.214.173]:50564 "EHLO mail-ob0-f173.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751528AbaACBH3 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Jan 2014 20:07:29 -0500 Received: by mail-ob0-f173.google.com with SMTP id gq1so15006494obb.4 for ; Thu, 02 Jan 2014 17:07:28 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: From: Pierre Bourdon Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2014 02:07:08 +0100 Message-ID: (sfid-20140103_020732_205642_3F36A1D6) Subject: Re: Exporting the TSF to userland To: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 5:24 AM, Pierre Bourdon wrote: > Hello linux-wireless, > > I'm a developer of libdrc, a project that allows Linux computers to > control a Wii U GamePad. Because of how the device operates, our > library needs to be able to read the TSF value of the access point > device from userland. > > We currently have a hacky patch that works for our use cases, but it > would be a lot more convenient if that feature could be upstreamed. > What would be the best way to proceed? > > Our current patch: > https://bitbucket.org/memahaxx/drc-mac80211/commits/4a9823cf2a6733bc15a05cffaebd8850d07451a7 To clarify: I have 0 experience developing "clean" stuff for the Linux driver (only hacky patches). A few simple questions that I have in order to make this patch more useful: * Is there some kind of "threshold" for features like this to be accepted upstream? How likely is it that this feature will get merged in the end? * Is there any framework for exporting data from mac80211 drivers to a /sys or /proc file? There is code that exports data to debugfs, but that is usually not mounted by default or enabled by distributions. Our patch currently uses a /sys file, but I think nothing else in mac80211 does anything like that so far. * Should integer values be exported as human-readable ASCII base 10 numbers in proc/sys files or is exporting the raw bytes as our patch currently does acceptable? Thanks, -- Pierre "delroth" Bourdon Software Engineer @ Z?rich, Switzerland http://code.delroth.net/