On Thu, Jun 5, 2025, 3:25 AM David Chisnall <thera...@freebsd.org> wrote:
> Thanks, > > I always believe that our stability policies should be things that exist > to improve the experience of downstream folks, not sticks we beat ourselves > with. They should adapt with changing needs. > > The main issues with changing network ABIs come from jails. If ifconfig in > a 14.x jail doesn’t work in a 15.x jail, that’s a big problem. I wouldn’t > expect this to matter for the WiFi-specific parts. You’re almost always > configuring some virtual interface in a jail, not the WiFi bits. > Given the choice, I'd trade this being broken for better wifi support. But the rest will work. The proposed ABI breakage is confined to WIFI only. Everything else should just work as they do today. I saw something fly past in phabricator recently for moving these to using > nvlists, is it likely that this will be done for 15 so 16 kernels will be > able to use userland tools from 15? I didn’t see how complete the patches > were or if they touched the WiFi bits. > > On the KBI side, it would be nice if out-of-tree WiFi drivers could exist > and work across a major release. It sounds as if they simply can’t usefully > exist at the moment (independent of KBI changes), but it would be nice if > that could be a goal for 16. > Never going to happen. That's not possible today for any module at all. We can't even do minor releases with anything complicated (though some simpler drivers can work with sufficient effort). Warner David > > > On 4 Jun 2025, at 18:52, Bjoern A. Zeeb <b...@freebsd.org> wrote: > > > > Hello, > > > > Cc: wireless, current, stable, desktop > > > > FreeBSD WiFi development has regained traction. We are facing a > > decision with FreeBSD 15 coming before the end of this year [1]. > > > > In order to continue WiFi development, upcoming changes will inevitably > > break the net80211-driver and net80211-userland interfaces. > > By FreeBSD's standards those would not be mergeable to stable branches, > > such as stable/15 then. > > > > This would imply development happening in FreeBSD 16-CURRENT (main at > > that point) would stay there. The first release to ship anything major > > beyond now would be FreeBSD 16.0 in December 2027 [1]. > > > > After some discussion we think this is not a feasible solution and we > > will declare the KPI and KBI for wireless as unstable in FreeBSD 15. > > > > This allows us to merge changes from main into stable/15 for inclusion > > in future point releases (e.g., 15.1, 15.2, etc.) as the code matures. > > However, this also means that during the lifetime of FreeBSD 15, we may > > introduce breaking changes affecting out-of-tree and in-tree drivers, > > userland-kernel interfaces, and chipsets. We will address these > > disruptions as they arise. > > > > Before finalizing this decision, we invite feedback from the community. > > If you have concerns or objections, please speak up now. > > > > Bjoern (on behalf of the Wireless Development Team) > > Tom > > Adrian > > Ed > > Joe > > > > [1] https://www.freebsd.org/releng/ > > > > -- > > Bjoern A. Zeeb r15:7 > > > >
