wireless status report

Hi,

my last week was almost exclusively spent on

- fwget(8) updates, which were then requested to be broken into flavors
   (D44918).  While I was reluctant to do it now as there's too much
   on the TODO and it dodn't seem as important as continueing first to
   move firmware out of base; in hindsight it was the right request
   given now it is done and we don't have to start all over again.

- With further updates it was suggested that these updates could be
   generated automatically.  I set down and went through each of the
   drivers again enhancing the mostly single-line helpers I had into
   full scripts doing extra checks and dealing with "special" parts
   of each.
   These scripts are "not beautiful" but "do the job" as the commit
   message indicates.  They are currently on github:
   https://github.com/freebsd/wireless/commit/aa03599103d7f7843ce1f0d0b38eadb4fbd29384
   The https://github.com/freebsd/wireless/tree/bz_wifi_drv_update branch
   also includes the updats of fwget(8):
   https://github.com/freebsd/wireless/commit/04d43be2cfb3b8d9ed9b3f3a568a1a8fd40be224

- Updates to the wifi-firmware-$name-kmod ports and adding iwlwifi.
   Flavors as requested are now supported as well and needed the extra
   round-trip to get right (I am not a ports person yet).
   The entire distfiles/flavor sections are now also generated
   from the scripts mentioned above so updates in the future should
   be like drivers--doable in a short time.
   The update is in D44945 and jrm has been helpful reviewing.

- For iwlwifi the script also generate the iwlwififw(4) table
   (and the one for the wiki page
   https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Iwlwifi/Chipsets which got updated)

- I also started to look at bsdinstall and the release building process
   in order to get fwget(8) support into it and also on how to get
   the firmware packages installed into an installation media (likely
   memstick or a varian thereof).

- Anyone wanting to test fwget installing the correct flavor of firmware
   for their card will be more than welcome.  At least please keep an
   eye out for when these changes land (likely along the driver update
   to main).  Testing with more than just 1 chipset per driver is
   time-consuming so any feedback will help.

- There was very little feedback on any of the driver updates on github.
   Thanks for the people testing rtw8x.
   I had one request for a stable/14 based branched.
   Is the conclusion that things need to be in the tree for people to
   have a look?

- The usual bits on some reviews for LinuxKPI etc. and some emails
   which did not hit the list.


I'll be less available/responsive for the next week given Eastern Easter
is this weekend.

Lots of health and joy,
Bjoern

-- 
Bjoern A. Zeeb                                                     r15:7