[OpenWrt-Devel] ar71xx: add support for UniFi-AC-Mesh-Pro

[Mathias Kresin]

2018-07-18 19:04 GMT+02:00 Matthias Schiffer <mschiffer at universe-factory.net>:
> On 07/07/2018 10:34 PM, Christoph Krapp wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> i'm writing to the mailing list because mkresin closed my github pr[1]
>> and pointed me here.
>> The PR adds model detection for Ubiquity UniFi-AC-Mesh-Pro to the
>> ar71xx target. The source of inspiration was the commit that added
>> UniFi-AC-Mesh detection [2].
>> This patch is needed for the gluon project as we need to distinguish
>> between indoor and outdoor devices. Right now some communities use the
>> ap-ac-pro image and have to manually configure the 5GHz channel to
>> comply with the local rules. This could be done automatically if the
>> detection gets merged.
>> mkresin merged the ath79 patch and therefore closed the arth71xx pr.
>> As the ath79 target is not finished right now and disabled in
>> openwrt-18.06 we need the ar71xx patch as the next gluon version will
>> be based on 18.06.
>> So please consider to merge this patch and backport it to the 18.06
>> branch as it only adds an alias and the model detection was tested
>> successfully by multiple people on both devices.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> achterin
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/1107
>> [2] https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/f8dbafb234c9a0a836ff3bede0540c20914b6d4e
>>
>
>
> Having a way to get ath79 hardware backports into 18.06 would be nice; I
> see three options here:

To be honest, I don't like the idea of backporting support for new
boards or features to a stable branch with minor releases. In my
opinion it would be better to focus on fixing bugs/security issues.
Especially if we mange to do major releases more often. But as said
before, it's up to the dev who does the work.

>
> 1) Continue accepting ar71xx patches in the OpenWrt master

I'm not saying that we shouldn't accept any ar71xx patches for master
any more. But the situation is the following: More than 20% of the
open pull requests on GitHub are ar71xx related, most of them > 4
weeks old and nobody really cares about them any more.

> backport to 18.06
> 2) Directly merge ar71xx patches to 18.06 without applying them to master first

See my replies above regarding backporting board support. I don't
think a direct merge to 18.06 will work. If nobody adds support for
this particular board to master between two releases, someone has to
do the work twice (at least).

> 3) Backport the ath79 target to 18.06 (I think having ath79 in 18.06 was
> planned, but it was removed because it was not ready yet - which might have
> changed by now?)

I don't think ath79 is stable enough to be included in a release. It
might work for boards which are added so far, but there are still
issues left which prevents adding support for more more
complex/special boards.

> In any case, the ath79 target should take precedence, and we should not
> accept ar71xx hardware support patches in either of the branches as long as
> the hardware has not been added to ath79 first.

Here we both agree.

Mathias

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