Status of orphaned ltq_etop ethernet driver: mainline vs. OpenWRT

[Rosen Penev]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 12:36 PM Hauke Mehrtens <hauke at hauke-m.de> wrote:
>
> On 1/28/26 21:23, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
> > This driver in mainline lost its in-tree user with commit
> > cd93b4895ea5 ("MIPS: lantiq: drop mips_machine support")
> > in 2012. Since then it has had no in-tree user.
> >
> > Only (?) user seems to be OpenWRT, with several changes to
> > the in-tree driver version:
> > target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/035-owrt-lantiq-wifi-and-ethernet-eeprom-handling.patch
> > target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/028-NET-lantiq-various-etop-fixes.patch
> > target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/701-NET-lantiq-etop-of-mido.patch
> > So it seems the driver is maintained in OpenWrt only
> > (except tree-wide in-tree changes).
> >
> > To me this leaves two questions:
> > - Move this driver to OpenWRT completely?
> > - Or mainline all downstream changes, maintain driver in
> >    mainline, and mainline also the users of this driver?
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> I think dropping this from the mainline kernel is fine, if it causes
> efforts for you.
> This is the Ethernet of the Lantiq Danube SoC, the SoC is probably EoL
> since 15 years. I assume that all users either use the vendor SDK with
> Linux 2.6.X or OpenWrt.
>
> I will not spend much effort on this driver and others will probably
> also not spend much effort. We can move it completely into OpenWrt and
> keep it running there.
FWIW I have some cleanup commits on the driver. Would be great to have
the driver as C files to make editing easier...
>
> Hauke
>
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