and support for the N66 is hanging by a thread, soon to go the way of the N16? I'm sure you are still using the buggy binary from 9313,
If it comes to it then yes, I might eventually have to drop older models. This is a
one man project - I CANNOT develop 2-3 separate versions of the code just to be able to support all the separate code branches Asus develops for different models. You're asking for me to double the amount of work involved.
Having 378-related binary blobs is no guarantee that I can make them work with the 380 code base, as the interface between the two can change. I already have to apply a few ugly hacks to be able to support the RT-N66 and RT-AC66U at all right now. Be happy there's an actual working firmware available for these two models.
Merged RT-AC68U and RT-N66U binary blobs from GPL 9313
but if the fix is elsewhere in the code surely a diff of the old vs new will allow a similar fix to be ported to Merlin firmware?
I already have that fix in the upstream 380 code, however there are many hundreds of changes between the two GPL releases, making it hard for me to isolate one single fix out of those hundreds of lines. You will have to wait for either 380.58 or 380.59 which will have any change found in older 378 releases.
The latest 380 code I'm working with for 380.59 is only one week old. It's newer than this 9529 release.
Shame that Asuswrt Merlin 380.57 for the N66 released 24-Dec-2015 has the bug that Asus apparently fixed a couple of weeks earlier 2015/12/11.
Developing a new release isn't something that takes 2 or 3 days of work and then I'm done. My typical development cycle is roughly one month per release. That means if Asus makes any new release during that month of development, the changes from that release will have to wait for the next release. So, Asus's fixes that occurred during the 380.57 development have to wait for the next release.
Can the binaries be extracted from the firmware image, or do we need the obj files?
Those are linkable objects, they aren't executables. They can't be extracted from a firmware, they are no longer separate files.
If you're unhappy with what I can produce, then find someone who can share the work with me. Cause I'm already doing the best I can within the current limitations, which are: a) I'm doing everything alone, b) this is a part-time hobby, not my fulltime job, c) Asus is constantly increasing the amount of closed-source components, and these components aren't always backward/forward compatible. So far, I don't see anyone willing to actively help.
