14 Staging Drivers Get Nuked From Linux 3.17

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 14 Staging Drivers Get Nuked From Linux 3.17

Over 200,000 lines of code is being removed from the Linux 3.17 kernel in the staging subsystem due to the removal of a bunch of old, unmaintained drivers...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc1NTY

[Sonadow]

The drivers removed with Linux 3.17 include Crystalhd, Winbond, wlags49_h2, serqt_usb2, dgrp, cxt1e1, tidspbridge, ced1401, frontier, keucr, phison,silicom, and sep. Of that list, the crystalhd driver may be noticeable for Broadcom's Crystal HD audio/video hardware coder

Big, big, big mistake.

[Serafean]

Big, big, big mistake.

Then find a maintainer... While I agree with you in principle (knowing what the hw in question does), getting rid of unmaintained code is more important in the bigger picture.

[Sonadow]

Then find a maintainer..

Not a chance.

I'll just slap Windows on any machine that uses it (where possible). At least Broadcom supports their CrystalHD hardware with official drivers on Windows.

[GraysonPeddie]

Hmm... Crystal HD...
=
Something tells me that this chipset isn't obsolete.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Broadcom_Crystal_HD

So why remove it? How long has the so-called "Crystal HD" been out? What's so special about that name other than the fact it does audio/video decoding? What products have Crystal HD in it?

Would Linus Torvalds be happy about the cleanup of crystalhd? I don't know...

[RahulSundaram]

Hmm... Crystal HD...
=
Something tells me that this chipset isn't obsolete.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Broadcom_Crystal_HD

So why remove it? How long has the so-called "Crystal HD" been out? What's so special about that name other than the fact it does audio/video decoding? What products have Crystal HD in it?

Would Linus Torvalds be happy about the cleanup of crystalhd? I don't know...

There are rules for drivers in staging which is a experimental part of the kernel. They either have to find a maintainer, get the code cleaned up for the real merge or get removed. This has happened with many drivers before including the Microsoft Hyper V code. There is nothing unusual about it.

[GraysonPeddie]

Ah, staging = experimental. That makes sense.

[Gusar]

The in-kernel crystalhd driver is outdated, for example it doesn't support the BCM70015 variant at all, among other things. Everyone using this hardware is probably using an external driver, not the in-kernel one.

[Sonadow]

The in-kernel crystalhd driver is outdated, for example it doesn't support the BCM70015 variant at all, among other things. Everyone using this hardware is probably using an external driver, not the in-kernel one.

I know of two existing external repositories for the crystalhd driver:

http://git.linuxtv.org/cgit.cgi/jarod/crystalhd.git/

https://github.com/yeradis/crystalhd

The LinuxTV repos have not been touched in 21 months, and the yeradis repo has been stagnant for 1 year.

Not a good sign either way.

Unless you can point me to a repo that houses a more up-to-date version of the crystalhd driver?

*the driver sources published on Broadcom's site are painfully obsolete;they won't compile on anything newer than a 3.3 kernel.

[droidhacker]

I know of two existing external repositories for the crystalhd driver:

http://git.linuxtv.org/cgit.cgi/jarod/crystalhd.git/

https://github.com/yeradis/crystalhd

The LinuxTV repos have not been touched in 21 months, and the yeradis repo has been stagnant for 1 year.

Not a good sign either way.

Unless you can point me to a repo that houses a more up-to-date version of the crystalhd driver?

*the driver sources published on Broadcom's site are painfully obsolete;they won't compile on anything newer than a 3.3 kernel.

Stagnant isn't necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, it means "it works".
... which it does.