Re: [PATCH 0/7] wifi: brcmfmac: AWDL for AirDrop on Apple T2 Macs

[Aditya Garg]

Hi Arend

> I really have no idea how to deal with this series. AWDL is not part of the IEEE 802.11 so I can imagine the kernel wireless subsystem does not care to support this. From driver perspective I am not keen on supporting this upstream either. My limited understanding of AWDL was that it was Apple's variant of TDLS (802.11z).
> 
> So what does AWDL provide to user-space and could the same be accomplished by TDLS? From the explanation above it seems AWDL provides more knobs to user-space, but not sure whether the awdl%d interface is merely a control interface or actually passing data through it (patch 5 implies it does). If my memory does not fail me then adding vendor commands is generally pushed back.
> 
> Regards,
> Arend

There has been a lot of Apple specific code in the kernel, be it HID, DRM, EFI etc. So why not a small bit of code in brcmfmac. We have never faced complaints from those maintainers in getting code upstreamed which is different from the standards, but is needed for the hardware to work. While the concern of unable the understand the code is valid, I believe the author can be questioned to clear doubts before upstreaming. Getting code rejected just because of inability to maintain is heartbreaking when people work hard to make something good. Also the patches are just for Apple Macs, and not for supporting AirDrop on random hardware, so it shouldn't be that difficult to maintain.

Ccing some Asahi folks who might have a shared interest in this series.