FCP-0101: Deprecating most 10/100 Ethernet drivers

[Brooks Davis]

On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 10:24:13AM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Oct 2018 21:05:16 -0000 Brooks Davis <brooks at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > 
> > The current list of drivers slated for REMOVAL is:
> >
> > ae, bfe, bm, cs, dme, ed, ep, ex, fe, pcn, rl, sf, smc, sn,
> > ste, tl, tx, txp, vx, wb, xe
> >
> > The current list of drivers that will STAY in the tree is:
> >
> > dc, ffec, fxpl, hme, le, sis, vr, xl
> 
> What is the disposition of drivers not on either list?

They weren't considered and nothing changes unless someone points them
and proposes some action.  The document points out that USB devices
were skipped.  Not mentioned were NICs tied to specific architectures.

> > 10 and 100 megabit Ethernet drivers are largely irrelevant today
> > and we have a significant number of them in the tree.  The ones that
> > are no longer used and/or are not known to be working need to be
> > removed due to the significant ongoing 'tax' on new development.
> 
> I don't understand why there is a "significant ongoing 'tax'
> on new development" for old NICs.  Can the internal MI<->MD
> interface be evolved in the direction where the MD drivers for
> old h/w "just work"? Or is it a hopeless task?

I've touched every single Ethernet driver by hand multiple times in
that past year in our research tree.  We'll never know how much
modernization isn't being done because it's a pain.  iflib does reduce
this cost, but conversion isn't trivial.  We should work to migrate
drivers that are used and stop wasting time on ones that aren't.

-- Brooks
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