Reminder: FCP-101: pending removal of some 10/100 Ethernet drivers

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Feb 1, 2019, 11:05 AM Brooks Davis <brooks at freebsd.org wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 04:00:50AM -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 11:43:44PM +0000, Brooks Davis wrote:
> > > > We are currently planning to remove the following less-popular 10/100
> > > > Ethernet drivers in the March/April timeframe:
> > > >
> > > > ae, bm, cs, de, dme, ed, ep, ex, fe, pcn, sf, sn, tl, tx, txp, vx,
> wb, xe
> > > >
> > > > All of these drivers generate warnings in FreeBSD 12 and to the best
> of
> > > > my knowledge, none have cleared the bar specified in the FCP[0]:
> > > >
> > > > https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0101.md
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > The above document states that the support lifetime for FreeBSD 12 is
> 2023.
> > >
> > > The expected EOL (but not decided) for 12 is June 30, 2020 however,
> according to
> >
> > Can someone please go revise where ever this is posted based on the 18
> month
> > minima that was set to simply state "undetermined", people are reading
> too much
> > into the date posted there.
> >
> > > https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup
> > >
> > > So, hardware in some of my machines will only be supported until
> sometime next
> > > year.
> >
> > Brooks,
> >       Given that at the time FCP-101 was written part of it was
> > based on the assumption of a 5 year life time for 12.0.  Since that
> > assumption is now invalid, and worse, unknown, I would ask that until
> > a decision about the life of 12.0 is made we back off on the FCP-101
> process
> > and not do anything about removing drivers until that support
> > model adjustment is finalized and we can evaluate the impact on
> > FCP-101's assumption.
>
> Per the text of my email and the schedule in the FCP, no deletions
> will occur until after the support lifetime of 12 is scheduled to be
> resolved.  Should that date slip then any deletions would also slip.
> Should the lifetime of 12 be drastically reduced relative to the
> original lifetime, then yes we should revisit our list and schedule.
>
> A majority of these devices have *zero* confirmed users so we should
> likely delete them before 13 no matter what happens to 12-STABLE's
> lifetime.
>

None of the drivers on the current list, with the possible exception of ae,
are used enough that the 12.x support timeline matters at all. And only in
the craziest of scenarios would ae come close to mattering. The rest are
all already dead and not even a close call between completely irrelevant
and almost completely irrelevant, let alone meeting a standard of relevant
enough to provide net value to the project.

No further action beyond data collection is scheduled on this FCP until
> after the end of the quarter.


I should run a new report based on the data we have around that time as
well...

Warner

-- Brooks
>
> P.S. All of this hardware will be supported until at least September 30,
> 2021 on FreeBSD 11-STABLE.
>