Side cleanups

Multi architecture support (64 bit)
Bi-endian support (big endian)

cfg80211 API enhancements

Luis is working on this. This section is going to be extended as time goes by. This section will provide recipes of what needs to get done.

Understanding how ath6kl uses private ioctls

The Linux kernel now uses cfg80211 for any new driver. cfg80211 takes care of wireless-extensions for older drivers, so drivers do not need to register their own wireless-extensions at all. Private wireless extensions also cannot be supported by design. This section documents what needs to get done to replace properly these older APIs to allow us to get the driver into proper placement into the Linux kernel.

This initial section will document how the private handlers are used in the driver and defined.

Typically with the older wireless-extensions drivers are allowed to use private wireless extensions. Wireless extensions essentially allowed the netdev to use some specific ioctl()s for wireless device manipulation. If the driver needed to use private definitions of their own (private commands) they would then define their own private handlers as part of wireless-extensions in a way similar to this:

const struct iw_handler_def prism54_handler_def = {
        .num_standard = ARRAY_SIZE(prism54_handler),
        .num_private = ARRAY_SIZE(prism54_private_handler),
        .num_private_args = ARRAY_SIZE(prism54_private_args),
        .standard = (iw_handler *) prism54_handler,
        .private = (iw_handler *) prism54_private_handler,
        .private_args = (struct iw_priv_args *) prism54_private_args,
        .get_wireless_stats = prism54_get_wireless_stats,
};

However ath6kl does not use of wireless-extensions private extensions... it makes use of the standard netdev ndo_do_ioctl callback as follows:

static struct net_device_ops ar6000_netdev_ops = {
    .ndo_init               = NULL,
    .ndo_open               = ar6000_open,
    .ndo_stop               = ar6000_close,
    .ndo_get_stats          = ar6000_get_stats,
    .ndo_do_ioctl           = ar6000_ioctl,
    .ndo_start_xmit         = ar6000_data_tx,
    .ndo_set_multicast_list = ar6000_set_multicast_list,
};

It is important to understand how ath6kl uses this ioctl in order to properly address how the private commands can be addressed. ar6000_ioctl() furthermore splits received ioctls into 3 categies:

Standard wireless-extensions commands
Private wireless-extensions
Some further extensions ath6kl calls xioctls...

Now each of these will only be allowed if and only if the respective secondary command passed was designed to operate on the current mode of operation.

It should be noted that it is pretty silly to even support standard wireless-extensions to be used piggy backed ontop of the generic netdev ioctl given that wireless-extensions already supports the standard wireless-extensions...

xioctls: move to debugfs

xioctls are ioctls for ath6kl which are very device specific knobs. Below we categorize them. It seems we can likely just move these knobs to debugfs. An evaluation needs to be done to determine if users of these APIs would be happy in using debugfs.

BT coex APIs:
- ar6000_xioctl_set_bt_status_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_bt_params_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_fe_ant_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_colocated_bt_dev_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_btinquiry_page_config_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_sco_config_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_a2dp_config_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_aclcoex_config_cmd()
- ar60000_xioctl_set_btcoex_debug_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_set_btcoex_bt_operating_status_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_get_btcoex_config_cmd()
- ar6000_xioctl_get_btcoex_stats_cmd()

Android

Android needs to be changed to use standard APIs, see this Android changes section.

config cleanup

CONFIG_HOST_TCMD_SUPPORT

This requires some special firmware and will vary depending on the revision of the chipset.

AR6003_REV1_VERSION –> AR6003_REV1_TCMD_FIRMWARE_FILE
AR6003_REV2_VERSION –> AR6003_REV2_TCMD_FIRMWARE_FILE

It seems this does not actually affect the WMI API other firmware so why not just remove the ifdef and keep the code in place. The only use I see for the config option is that it enables a module parameter testmode which if set then it will load the test firmware. This can likely be kept for now, even for proper placement in the Linux kernel.

Random always set macros

This can be remove and the code that makes sense left in place.

ccflags-y += -DLINUX -DKERNEL_2_6
ccflags-y += -DTCMD
ccflags-y += -DSEND_EVENT_TO_APP
ccflags-y += -DUSER_KEYS
ccflags-y += -DNO_SYNC_FLUSH
ccflags-y += -DHTC_EP_STAT_PROFILING
ccflags-y += -DATH_AR6K_11N_SUPPORT
ccflags-y += -DWAPI_ENABLE
ccflags-y += -DCHECKSUM_OFFLOAD
ccflags-y += -DWLAN_HEADERS
ccflags-y += -DINIT_MODE_DRV_ENABLED
ccflags-y += -DBMIENABLE_SET
...
#if WIRELESS_EXT < 18

AP Mode support using cfg80211

No one is working on this yet.

WiFi Direct

No one is working on this yet