Incoming change in the Asuswrt-merlin development pace

[Prevok]

I don't think Asus would have much to gain from hiring me. My programming skills are those of an hobbyist, not a professional programmer. I wouldn't know where to start if I were asked to write something from scratch in C.

A lot of what I do is possible because I'm currently free of any corporate schedule. I have no release schedule to meet, no marketing department asking me to provide additional bullet points for their Powerpoint sales pitches, and no product manager telling me what to do (or what not to do). So while I can afford to spend entire evening on a single issue that's bugging me, that wouldn't be possible when working inside a company with deadlines to meet.

Interesting, I was actually wondering how advanced of a programmer you were. Don't get me wrong, I love your firmware and I am quite impressed and happy with it, it's not meant as an insult, far from it. I, myself, do a lot of scripting, but I am not a programmer, merely a System Admin. Mind you, I never touched C, but did a fair bit of Bash, Python, Batch and VBS.

I was actually tempted to give a shot at compiling the Asus GPL and try to manually add a couple of feature you added, just to see what the process is. Assuming it's within my skill set, I would be willing to buy a spare dev router. I just don't know if I would have a lot of time to put in. At the very least I can safely assume my girlfriend would not be trilled

 

[KGB7]

Merlin.

You mentioned that it takes you longer now to compile new code. Is it do to time consuming manual labor, or lack of horse power in your computer?

 

[Prevok]

I believe he was referring to the time it takes to manually resolve the difference between his code and ASUS's code.

So that would be manual labor

 

[RMerlin]

Merlin.

You mentioned that it takes you longer now to compile new code. Is it do to time consuming manual labor, or lack of horse power in your computer?

Compiling time is fine, as a full firmware build takes between 14 and 20 minutes (depending on which model), a partial build taking generally a few minutes. It's the merge of new GPL code that takes a lot of time.

 

[RMerlin]

Interesting, I was actually wondering how advanced of a programmer you were. Don't get me wrong, I love your firmware and I am quite impressed and happy with it, it's not meant as an insult, far from it. I, myself, do a lot of scripting, but I am not a programmer, merely a System Admin. Mind you, I never touched C, but did a fair bit of Bash, Python, Batch and VBS.

I have about 30 years of experience in programming on various platforms as a hobbyist. I never had any formal training (I studied electronics, with my specialisation being into computers), so there are a few basic concepts that I'm missing, especially when it comes to C.

 

[thiggins]

Is that the Linksys WRT1900AC ?

I have not seen it reviewed here yet.

Linksys WRT1900AC AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

Linksys WRT1900AC Review - More Tests

 

[Deleted member 27741]

The price is dropping quickly on the wrt1900. I wish they had actually made it usable with third party firmware, but then they go and put a marvell chipset in it. What were they thinking?

 

[Raiu]

I have a marvel nic in my Acer laptop never had problems with it and pretty fast connection consistently.

 

[Steffe]

Thank you for your great work! My concerns are mainly about security fixes. Such changes will also be hard to implement or will asus simply put out a fixed version for all its routers?

 

[RMerlin]

Thank you for your great work! My concerns are mainly about security fixes. Such changes will also be hard to implement or will asus simply put out a fixed version for all its routers?

Since fixes are rolled up within their releases, knowing where they are within a few thousands lines of code changes is next to impossible, so they will have to be applied at the same time the rest of a GPL gets merged - unless they are component updates. For instance, I already updated openssl to 1.0.0n on my Git repo.

 

[sfx2000]

Another issue is how different the Asus routers are becoming with each new generation. We currently have the following generations:

- Old SDK5 device (RT-N16)
- First gen SDK6 (RT-N66, RT-AC66
- First gen ARM devices (RT-AC56, RT-AC68
- Quantenna device (RT-AC87)

All four require their own, separate copy of the closed-source components used by Asus. On top of that you can expect a fifth one to appear in the coming months, with the implantation of Broadcom's SDK7 (used for the RT-AC3200). This means that whenever Asus releases a new GPL for one of these four generations, I only get the updated closed source component of that specific generation. So if for example Asus were to release FW 376_5000 for the RT-AC87 with a whole new AiCloud, it would be impossible for me to implement it on the other generations until Asus also released the GPL for these other generations, with their corresponding closed source bits.

Having been in the OEM space, I completely understand the challenges here of supporting multiple SDK's and toolchains within a community-based development project.

In any event, I appreciate your ongoing efforts... the Asus Enthusiast community owes much to your efforts, and many of the fixes you've done have been backported back into the ASUS platforms.

thx

sfx

 

[DallasFlier]

You'd be surprised how few there are. I've never been closed to contributions, that was one of the reasons why I always keep my code up-to-date on Github.

People are far more inclined to take than to give, and the technically-skilled ones are quite rare.

I'm a network engineer, but not a software coder. For that reason I can't offer any significant assistance, but am "technically astute" enough to understand the value of your firmware - and wanted to say thanks for all that you've done and continue to do for the community. You are THE reason I chose an ASUS router rather than any other manufacturer when I recently purchased my RT-AC68U.

 

[venkat]

Notes on how to compile for auss AC68U from source or asuswrt-merlin

Would there be notes on how to compile for auss AC68U from source or asuswrt-merlin?

 

[john9527]

Would there be notes on how to compile for auss AC68U from source or asuswrt-merlin?

Check out the wiki on github....it seems most people use Ubuntu for the environment.

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Compile-Firmware-from-source-using-Ubuntu

 

[scotte]

It's really too bad that ASUS doesn't maintain their GPL firmware in git with full branch history (i.e. full commit history, not a commit-per-release). git mergetool does a pretty darn impressive job with handling code moving around, though of course true conflicts have to be resolved by hand, as there is just no other way (meld is great for this).

Anyway, as a happy user of asuswrt-merlin on my AC68U, thank you Merlin for all your hard work in this project, I've found the last couple of releases to be super stable and performing well. Thank you!

 

[RMerlin]

It's really too bad that ASUS doesn't maintain their GPL firmware in git with full branch history (i.e. full commit history, not a commit-per-release). git mergetool does a pretty darn impressive job with handling code moving around, though of course true conflicts have to be resolved by hand, as there is just no other way (meld is great for this).

Asus's Git obviously contains a lot of proprietary code, so it's not suitable for publishing. They have to run special scripts on top of their repo to generate GPL tarballs without the proprietary bits included.

 

[Chrysalis]

Merlin given this custom driver only works properly in america, are you now going to revert to the driver that works properly for all regions? Since you made it clear in another post you dont like us unlocking the region to fix our routers.

 

[RMerlin]

Merlin given this custom driver only works properly in america, are you now going to revert to the driver that works properly for all regions? Since you made it clear in another post you dont like us unlocking the region to fix our routers.

What custom driver? There's no custom driver there, it's Asus's closed source driver. And the driver has nothing to do with the region locking, the change is in the firmware code.

 

[Chrysalis]

drteeth said gb/eu etc. works on driver in asuswrt but fails on optimised driver in asuswrt-merlin.

I am not talking about the locking but the fact wifi is broken outside of america region or unlocked region.

gb/eu etc. all broken on latest merlin firmwares.

 

[RMerlin]

drteeth said gb/eu etc. works on driver in asuswrt but fails on optimised driver in asuswrt-merlin.

I am not talking about the locking but the fact wifi is broken outside of america region or unlocked region.

gb/eu etc. all broken on latest merlin firmwares.

There is no "optimized" driver in my firmware, it's the exact same driver as used in Asuswrt.