Documentation for DSA? (Avoiding "OpenWrt 21.02 broke my router")

[Rich Brown]

Folks,

I'm writing to the OpenWrt-Adm list because I haven't heard much response from the OpenWrt-devel list.

I am concerned about the state of DSA documentation. When 21.02 ships, DSA will roll out to roughly half of the devices supported by OpenWrt. Yet I have not seen much written about the incompatibilities between swconfig and DSA configuration files.

My big concern: People upgrade to 21.02, their networking isn't working, and the Forum (or Slashdot) lights up with "OpenWrt 21.02 broke my router" posts.

Maybe it's all going to be OK. Maybe I'm getting panicky for no reason. But this is an incompatible upgrade for many people. If there are cases that cannot be converted automatically, we are going to have a big support load. And if there's no documentation, we're sunk...

I know the state of the majority of DSA pages in the wiki. (I started to write/edit a couple of them, but realized that I didn't know enough. So they're at best, incomplete, if not entirely wrong...)

I sent these notes to the openwrt-devel list:

DSA Documentation Status: http://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2021-July/035954.html

DSA Mini-Tutorial (only started): http://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2021-July/035854.html

Supporting DSA on the Forum: http://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2021-July/035942.html

It's my hope that someone who has the time and knowledge will follow up on them. (I'm ENOTIME, and don't know enough, anyway.) Or re-assure me that everything is OK.

Thanks.

Rich