Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing

From: Jeff Garzik
Date: Tue Oct 03 2006 - 18:41:53 EST


Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
Let's not make a mountain of this molehill. If you want to use
old versions of Wireless Tools and wpa_supplicant with WE-21, what you
need is just to add a dummy character at the end of your ESSID. And
everything will be fine.

FALSE. Old apps are by definition already in place. "all you need to do..." is an impossible condition to satisfy.


Also, there is no other way to update cleanly a kernel API
than to push userspace first. I think I took way more care in term of
smoothing over the API transition than any other kernel subsystem, so
I don't know what could have been done better. I don't remember this
level of flamewar when those other subsystems did change their
userspace APIs.

Userspace APIs can change, as long as they remain backwards compatible.

Just follow LKML to see all the flack people get, when userspace APIs change in an incompatible way. Or heck, just look at the changelog for the patches we revert, when such brokenness is detected.

Finally, until an API is actually in a kernel release, it has the potential to change. That's just a fact of Linux development. I certainly understand trying to get stuff out ahead of a kernel release, but you must understand the negative consequences of doing so, when something goes wrong. Like it did here.

Jeff


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