Development branch, stable branch, old Linux kernels

Jouni Malinen jkmaline at cc.hut.fi
Tue Oct 14 23:38:02 EDT 2003


The latest changes needed to make Host AP driver work with Linux 2.6.x
proved that it is too time consuming for me to try to support all
Linux kernel versions from 2.2.0 to 2.6.x in the same driver version.
Support for some of the v2.2.x net components make it very hard to
implement new features to Host AP driver cleanly. Furthermore, I do not
use Linux 2.2.x kernels anymore and there does not appear to be anyone
actively testing CVS snapshots of Host AP driver, so CVS snapshots do
not get enough (if any) testing with 2.2.x kernels.

To make it easier to continue developping Host AP driver with support to
new Linux kernel changes, I have branched the CVS tree into two
different versions.

A new branch, hostap_0_1_branch, will be a so called "stable branch",
which will be used for 0.1.x releases. It will mostly get bug fixes.
Merging new features into hostap_0_1_branch may be consider on case by
case basis if there seems to be enough interest for them (however, the
default is "no new features").

The CVS trunk will now be "development branch". It will be used for
0.2.x releases. At the moment, the most visible change is in this branch
only supporting latest Linux 2.4.x and Linux 2.6.x versions and
requiring that wireless extensions are enabled. I have already removed
backward compatibility code for Linux 2.2.x and wireless extension
version before 14. This means that only Linux kernels 2.4.19 or newer
are supported at the moment. People using older kernel versions will
need to either update their kernels (or at least wireless extensions) or
use Host AP versions from hostap_0_1_branch.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA



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