[Regression?] Commit cb4f71c429 deliberately changes order of network interfaces

From: Ralph Sennhauser
Date: Sun Aug 21 2016 - 09:22:10 EST


Dear List, Thomas, Gregory

Commit cb4f71c4298853db0c6751b1209e4535956f136c changes the order of
the network interfaces for armada-38x. As a special exception to the
"order by register address" rule says the comment in the dtsi. The
commit messages even calls it a violation.

I can't remember having owned a device were the internal and external
numbering actually matched, so the important bit for me is whatever the
order is it should remain constant.

Distributions like OpenWrt have to fix their code when moving from 4.4
currently to past 4.6 [1]. Worse the so called "wrong ordering" is
actually documented [2]. There are likely more victims out there. In
case it goes unnoticed by the distribution the users lan becomes wan
and vice versa.

It's unfortunate that this commit is already in stable 4.6 and 4.7.

What is your take on this? Should the commit be reverted?

Regards
Ralph

[1]
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob/master/target/linux/mvebu/base-files/etc/board.d/02_network
[2] https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1x00ac_series#switch_layout