Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] staging: octeon: avoid needless device allocation

From: Ladislav Michl <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 19:51:19 +0200

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 07:20:08PM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > I was asking this question myself and then came to this:
> > Converting driver to phylink makes separating different macs easier as
> > this driver is splitted between staging and arch/mips/cavium-octeon/executive/
> > However I'll provide changes spotted previously as separate preparational
> > patches. Would that work for you?
> 
> Is you end goal to get this out of staging? phylib vs phylink is not a
> reason to keep it in staging.

I agree. However it is a way to move it out as once phylink_mac_ops
for each mac gets implemented, most code from
arch/mips/cavium-octeon/executive could then be moved into respective
phylink_mac_op, so driver become self contained.

> It just seems odd to be adding new features to a staging driver. As a
> bit of a "carrot and stick" maybe we should say you cannot add new
> features until it is ready to move out of staging?

Ok. I will continue to add cleanup patches before phylink support and
we'll see how far we can get. That oddity has pretty simple reasoning:
mainline kernel should be useable instead of vendor's solution (which
does dirty SFP tricks from userpace and also supports AGL interface
which is missing in staging driver). Without this, it will end as a
spare time activity with a low priority. See this thread for context:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mips/Y6rsbaT0l5cNBGbu@lenoch/

> But staging is not my usual domain.

Network drivers are not my usual domain, but I'll try to deal
with that :)

> 	 Andrew

Thanks for the patience,
	ladis