Jakub Kicinski <kuba at kernel.org> writes:
>> For the wireless drivers, removing the old drivers
>> instead of just the dead code might be an alternative, depending
>> on whether anyone thinks there might still be users.
>
> Dunno if you want to dig into removal with a series like this,
> anything using ioctls will be pretty old (with the exception
> of what you separated into ndo_eth_ioctl). You may get bogged
> down.
I would very much like to get rid of unused ancient wireless drivers but
the problem is that it's next to impossible to know if someone still
uses a driver, or if the driver is even working. For example, few months
back I suggested removing one driver which I thought to be completely
unused (forgot already the name of the driver) and to my big surprise
there was still a user, and he reported it working with a recent kernel
release.
So I don't know what to do. Should we try adding a warning like below? :)
"This ancient driver will be removed from the kernel in 2022, but if
it still works send report to <... at ...> to avoid the removal."
How do other subsystems handle ancient drivers?
--
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/
https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches