On Thu, 18 Oct 2012, Richard Cochran wrote:

So there has been this cpsw driver since v3.4-rc1~177^2~5

   df82859 netdev: driver: ethernet: Add TI CPSW driver

and four people signed off on it, so it must have been working at one
point.

The signoffs just mean that those people are asserting that the code is 
covered under an appropriate license, or are passing it on through the 
maintainer hierarchy.  See 

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches;h=c379a2a6949f1c1cac04fb6f185c633512f37061;hb=HEAD#l298

It doesn't necessarily mean that the driver is usable in that kernel 
release.

Since the device tree make-over, the driver is a derelict, and thus the 
present patch is fixing a regression.

Probably the driver was submitted before any SoC integration support was 
available.  Grepping for 'cpsw' under arch/ turns up only AM33xx.  AM335x 
didn't have device enumeration support in the mainline kernel until 3.7, 
via commit a2cfc509bc4eeef9f5c4607b1203f17f22ea2a36 ("ARM: OMAP3+: hwmod: 
Add AM33XX HWMOD data").  So I don't see how it could have worked with 
mainline.

I just want the already merged driver to work with the vanilla
kernel. Is that too much to ask?

It's a very reasonable wish and your patches are certainly appreciated.

But it seems that the CPSW has never worked in the mainline kernel.  So 
this particular patch is not fixing a regression.  Therefore we shouldn't 
send it upstream during the -rc time period.  Instead we'll schedule it to 
be sent a few weeks later, during the 3.8 merge window.

Either way, the patch is likely to make it into the mainline kernel.  
It's just that it will probably take a few weeks longer than you might 
like.


- Paul