Re: HEADS UP: IPX over IP support removed

On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Maksim Yevmenkin wrote:

>> Just realized you had a question in here, which I must have missed in the 
>> previous pass.  What we're doing for i4b and netatm is leaving the code in 
>> the tree, but disconnecting it from the build for 7.0.  So if things don't 
>> come together in time, we can just do that.  I'm currently preparing a 
>> netatm patch, and Bjoern now has the i4b patch in the tree, so the ng_h4 
>> bits are the only ones left after that.
>
> i could not make my xircom cbt pccard work under -current :( and could not 
> test my changes. also no one stepped forward and said that ng_h4(4) is being 
> used. so, i vote in favor of disconnecting ng_h4(4) from the build right 
> now.
>
> should i disconnect ng_h4(4) only or make a bigger change and retire all 
> support for serial bluetooth devices?

Well, my interest here is only in eliminating NET_NEEDS_GIANT -- I don't mean 
to pass judgement on the more general class of devices, and as I know 
relatively little about them, couldn't do so in an informed way.  My advice 
would be to leave everything that works, even if the devices are less common, 
as long as there's not a maintenance issue.  And nothing says that ng_h4 can't 
come back in the future if people do turn up to do the testing.  You might 
want to consider polling stable_at_ if you haven't already -- there's a much 
larger user community there.  So I guess my advice is not to retire the rest 
if it's believed to work and isn't causing problems.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge