On Tue,  9 Feb 2016 16:29:09 -0800
David Decotigny [off-list ref] wrote:

Along the way, I chose to drop in the new structure the 3 ethtool_cmd
fields marked "deprecated" (transceiver/maxrxpkt/maxtxpkt). They are
still available for old drivers via the (old) ETHTOOL_GSET/SSET API,
but are not available to drivers that switch to new API. Of those 3
fields, ethtool_cmd::transceiver seems to be still actively used by
several drivers, maybe we should not consider this field deprecated?
The 2 other fields are basically not used. This transition requires
some care in the way old and new ethtool talk to the kernel.

Please just fix old drivers. It is perfectly acceptable to break any
out of tree drivers.