Re: Removing ARCNET stuffs

[Dennis Ferguson <dennis.c.ferguson%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 28 May, 2015, at 17:57 , Tyler Retzlaff <rtr%omicron-persei-8.net@localhost> wrote:
> On 5/28/2015 12:39 PM, Robert Swindells wrote:
>> Radoslaw Kujawa <radoslaw.kujawa%c0ff33.net@localhost> wrote:
>> 
>> The same arguments might be made against the plan to remove ATM
>> support.
> 
> I've got no problem with keeping it, removing it isn't really intellectually rewarding I thought it more of a cleanup/chore that nobody really wanted to do.  I only suggested removal because I know the code is broken.
> 
> I guess we could at least make it compile again if we kept it and add it to the ALL kernels.  Is that enough?  It's likely to still be broken and difficult to efficiently fix without any hardware though.

A long time ago I wrote code to support ATM interfaces for routers
that had the hardware.  I'm pretty sure they sold quite a few of
those interfaces and were still selling them not that long ago;
ADSL uses ATM framing and some carriers had ATM networks for
backhaul until they could no longer afford to pay the switch vendors
to maintain them.

I think you would say those routers supported ATM, and I don't
recall any complaints about that support being incomplete in some
way, yet that code did nothing similar to the stuff in sys/netnatm.
I know of no application which requires that and it clearly isn't
necessary to do something useful with ATM interfaces that people
were willing to spend (not inconsiderable) money for without it.

I would be much more impressed if someone stepped up, said they
knew what that code did and described what they would use it for
if the code actually worked.  As it is I believe that code not
only doesn't work but would have no utility if it did and probably
wasn't a good idea even when it was first included in the kernel
and you could still buy the hardware.  If someone had ATM hardware
they wanted to support they still wouldn't need that code and
would probably be better off if it were absent so they wouldn't
think the driver should be dependent on it.

If the idea of removing this causes angst I can't see how anything
can be removed, ever.

Dennis Ferguson