Hi Larry, > Once again I find myself in the awkward position of needing to submit code to > two different trees, i.e. wireless and staging. > > The code in question concerns a new Realtek device, the RTL8822BE. The device > is already shipping, and Realtek would like it to be available in kernel > 3.14. As it consists of ~120,000 new lines of code, I have assured Realtek > that 3.14 would not be possible, at least in the wireless tree. What I plan > to do is submit the changes in the existing drivers through wireless, and the > three totally new drivers through staging. My expectation is that this code > would live for a relatively short time there, but going that route would give > time for the code to be reviewed properly, but still be available in a kernel > driver. All of the new code will be available in a GitHub repo maintained by > Realtek for those users whose distros do not configure anything in staging. > > For my part, I will push the wireless tree material as fast as I can and hope > there is time available near the end of the 4.13-rcX sequence for the > material to reach 4.14-rc1.
I really do not understand the need for staging if there is already active cleanup and submission to wireless-drivers happening. I find it also unfair to others who submit code to linux-wireless and have it reviewed there before it gets merged. Also the faster it gets into wireless-drivers the faster it can be available via linux-backports. Seems many companies have used linux-backports successfully to deal with older kernel versions. Regards Marcel