When will we stop shipping WLAN improvements ahead of upstream in released Fedora version?

[Christopher Brown]

2008/7/5 Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>:
> Hi all
>
> John (CCed), I really appreciate your work in the wireless area and would
> like to use the opportunity to say "thanks for all you work", as support for
> WLAN hardware in the Linux kernel improved a lot in the upstream kernel and
> Fedora thx to your (and other linux wireless developers) work over the last
> two years.
>
>
> But we now for at least the second time in the past few weeks had/have
> a more-than-minor wireless breakage in a Fedora kernel for a released distro
> (bug #453390 now; http://lwn.net/Articles/286558/ is discussing the one some
> weeks ago; I think there was one more breakage not that long ago, but I
> can't remember). I and many users (see for example #453390) got hit by those
> problems. That's why I was wondering: what are we at Fedora doing to prevent
> similar problems in the future?
>
>
> Three things spring to my mind and I just propose then here for discussion;
> maybe something good comes out of it in the end:
>
> - a karama of "+3" in bodhi seems not enough for a auto-move from testing to
> stable (or even worse: straight to stable if enough people tested the kernel
> and gave their +1 after the update got filed in bodhi but *before* it
> actually hit fedora-testing) if there are no other pressing issues (like
> security fixes). The kernel is a to complex beast; more then 3 people should
> be needed to give a +1. And a bit of time needs to pass to give enough
> people the opportunity to install, test and report problems with new
> kernels. For the latest kernel it seems to me that "to less time" really was
> the problem, otherwise the problem from #453390 would have been noticed
> earlier
>
> - should we separate security updates and other kernel fixes in a better
>  way to make sure those "other fixes" get proper testing before they get
> send out to the users?
>
> - John, having all those pending and not-yet-upstream-merged improvements
> for wireless hardware in the Fedora kernel was something good in the past
> when WLAN support in the kernel was quite bad/incomplete. But the main and
> most important bits for proper wireless hardware support seem to be in the
> upstream kernel now; sure, there will always be improvements in the queue,
> but that's the same in most other linux subsystems with drivers as well. So
> I'm wondering: isn't it time now to finally stop shipping all those
> wireless-next bits (currently quite some big patches; see:
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl    2484 14. Mär 17:06
> linux-2.6-ms-wireless-receiver.patch
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl   39874  4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless-fixups.patch
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 2656652  4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless-pending.patch
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 4165718  4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless.patch
> ) in released Fedora Version (e.g. 8 and 9 currently) when we start shipping
> 2.6.26?

Wireless breakage occurs almost exclusively on desktop machines. If a
newer kernel breaks, roll back to the old one. I have experienced zero
wireless breakage since Fedora 9 was released (this on three separate
chipsets) and am happy for development to take place (in this one
particular area) ahead of kernel as it is still an area that lags
behind a Windows desktop environment.

Besides, I'm willing to bet removing the above patches will break even
more stuff than the occasional wireless tree pull-age.

Regards

-- 
Christopher Brown

http://www.chruz.com