RMerlin
Asuswrt-Merlin dev
2022 is almost over. This year hasn't really been easier than the last few ones. On top of a pandemic that refuses to go away, we've also seen a very small man decide to have visions of grandeur by invading his neighbour, having a destabilizing effect on the rest of the planet (on top of the numerous losses of lives for which he is directly responsible).
As is the tradition, here is my usual end-of-the-year summary.
2022 saw the addition of multiple new models to the list of supported devices. RT-AC68U V4, RT-AX86S, GT-AXE11000, GT-AX6000, Zen WiFi Pro XT12, GT-AX11000 Pro, GT-AXE16000, RT-AX86U Pro. There is already another new (unannounced yet) router which should launch in early 2023 and is currently on my planned list. I am not ready to announce anything official yet until I have received source code and completed the initial work. The router sample has already arrived from Taiwan. It's a lot of new models, and still there are a number of other models for which I have turned down the offer of supporting. I'm grateful for @GNUton taking some of the burden of device support here by taking care of supporting some of these other models that I am skipping. 2022 sure saw a lot of new products coming out of Asus's networking division.
On the firmware front, the 388 release was finalized by Asus, and Asuswrt-Merlin has moved all of its AX models to that new codebase. Most notably, this release brings support for WireGuard. For the time being, my plan is to continue supporting the currently supported AC models on the 386 code base as a separate branch. Asus hasn't declared any of these as being end-of-life yet, so that means development for these is STILL going on. It just won't get all of the changes that are part of 388, and it might also mean that releases for these models may be less frequent. For the time being, my plan is to continue supporting these devices for as long Asus themselves will. I am dependent on their own support as I need them to provide GPL code for each individual model.
As expected, development this year was largely focussed on maintenance and new model support rather than adding new features. I don't expect this to change in 2023 as I feel Asuswrt-Merlin has reached a point where adding more features would mostly amount to bloating it with rarely used features, and make maintaining more difficult. GPL merges have also been taking longer to complete with so many different models needing to be prepared by Asus' engineers. For example, it took close to 6 weeks to receive all the AX GPLs for the 388 release, and close to a month now for the AC GPLs. I might need to rethink my usual workflow to better deal with this.
Also, the code has become so large and complex, with significant portions of it no longer being open source, that from now on, I will be devoting less time trying to fix bugs in Asus' own code, focusing on my own code instead. The reality is, a single hobbyist does not have the time or resources to debug code developed by an entire team of fulltime engineers who have access to the entire source code rather than just portions of it, and who are far more familiar with the code which they wrote. Trying to track down an issue within Asus' code implies that I must first spend time understanding the related code, hope that it's not partially closed source, recreate a test setup to attempt to reproduce the issue... And only after that will I be ready to try to debug the affected code. This has simply become too much for me to handle, and has been a frequent source of increased frustration, both on my end and on the end of some end users who expect me to be able to do the work of a team of 20+ engineers. I simply cannot do this anymore. So, if you feel you have found a real issue within Asus' code, then by all means, go ahead and reproduce it with the stock firmware, and then report it to them through their feedback form. While I do on occasion report issues to their engineers (such as security issues), I refuse to become an unpaid contact person between their paying customers and their team.
Guys, remember that I am doing this as a personal hobby, not as a job.
That does not mean that I won't on occasion fix issues found within the stock Asuswrt code, only that I will no longer be devoting as much effort in this particular aspect ot development, as this has been a frequent source of burnout on my end.
2022 saw 6 major releases and two point releases, including a switch to the new 388 codebase. 386.9 is currently in development, I am awaiting one missing GPL before the beta cycle can begin for this release. I don't expect 386.9 to be finalized until sometime in January.
For 2023, I expect the focus to be fairly similar to 2022 (minus the major GPL merge). That means adding more (hopefully fewer!) new models to the support list, and maintaining both 386 and 388 branches separately. The release frequency might get closer to every 3 months rather than every 2 months if the current trend of GPL merges taking multiple weeks each time continues.
I want to thank everyone who were directly or indirectly involved in this project. Huge thanks to the folks back at Asus Taiwan, both in management and engineering who have been very supportive of this project, providing me with source code, development devices, and even support when I needed help with something specific. Shout out to the SNBForums community who are handling the technical support side of this project, and the addon developers who are still expanding what can be done by these routers without the need to be a networking guru. And my thanks to @thiggins for providing us with a place to stay. We might be noisy tenants at times, and for that I apologize
Have safe and happy Holiday everyone, and let's hope for a brighter2020 2021 2022 2023!
As is the tradition, here is my usual end-of-the-year summary.
2022 saw the addition of multiple new models to the list of supported devices. RT-AC68U V4, RT-AX86S, GT-AXE11000, GT-AX6000, Zen WiFi Pro XT12, GT-AX11000 Pro, GT-AXE16000, RT-AX86U Pro. There is already another new (unannounced yet) router which should launch in early 2023 and is currently on my planned list. I am not ready to announce anything official yet until I have received source code and completed the initial work. The router sample has already arrived from Taiwan. It's a lot of new models, and still there are a number of other models for which I have turned down the offer of supporting. I'm grateful for @GNUton taking some of the burden of device support here by taking care of supporting some of these other models that I am skipping. 2022 sure saw a lot of new products coming out of Asus's networking division.
On the firmware front, the 388 release was finalized by Asus, and Asuswrt-Merlin has moved all of its AX models to that new codebase. Most notably, this release brings support for WireGuard. For the time being, my plan is to continue supporting the currently supported AC models on the 386 code base as a separate branch. Asus hasn't declared any of these as being end-of-life yet, so that means development for these is STILL going on. It just won't get all of the changes that are part of 388, and it might also mean that releases for these models may be less frequent. For the time being, my plan is to continue supporting these devices for as long Asus themselves will. I am dependent on their own support as I need them to provide GPL code for each individual model.
As expected, development this year was largely focussed on maintenance and new model support rather than adding new features. I don't expect this to change in 2023 as I feel Asuswrt-Merlin has reached a point where adding more features would mostly amount to bloating it with rarely used features, and make maintaining more difficult. GPL merges have also been taking longer to complete with so many different models needing to be prepared by Asus' engineers. For example, it took close to 6 weeks to receive all the AX GPLs for the 388 release, and close to a month now for the AC GPLs. I might need to rethink my usual workflow to better deal with this.
Also, the code has become so large and complex, with significant portions of it no longer being open source, that from now on, I will be devoting less time trying to fix bugs in Asus' own code, focusing on my own code instead. The reality is, a single hobbyist does not have the time or resources to debug code developed by an entire team of fulltime engineers who have access to the entire source code rather than just portions of it, and who are far more familiar with the code which they wrote. Trying to track down an issue within Asus' code implies that I must first spend time understanding the related code, hope that it's not partially closed source, recreate a test setup to attempt to reproduce the issue... And only after that will I be ready to try to debug the affected code. This has simply become too much for me to handle, and has been a frequent source of increased frustration, both on my end and on the end of some end users who expect me to be able to do the work of a team of 20+ engineers. I simply cannot do this anymore. So, if you feel you have found a real issue within Asus' code, then by all means, go ahead and reproduce it with the stock firmware, and then report it to them through their feedback form. While I do on occasion report issues to their engineers (such as security issues), I refuse to become an unpaid contact person between their paying customers and their team.
Guys, remember that I am doing this as a personal hobby, not as a job.
That does not mean that I won't on occasion fix issues found within the stock Asuswrt code, only that I will no longer be devoting as much effort in this particular aspect ot development, as this has been a frequent source of burnout on my end.
2022 saw 6 major releases and two point releases, including a switch to the new 388 codebase. 386.9 is currently in development, I am awaiting one missing GPL before the beta cycle can begin for this release. I don't expect 386.9 to be finalized until sometime in January.
For 2023, I expect the focus to be fairly similar to 2022 (minus the major GPL merge). That means adding more (hopefully fewer!) new models to the support list, and maintaining both 386 and 388 branches separately. The release frequency might get closer to every 3 months rather than every 2 months if the current trend of GPL merges taking multiple weeks each time continues.
I want to thank everyone who were directly or indirectly involved in this project. Huge thanks to the folks back at Asus Taiwan, both in management and engineering who have been very supportive of this project, providing me with source code, development devices, and even support when I needed help with something specific. Shout out to the SNBForums community who are handling the technical support side of this project, and the addon developers who are still expanding what can be done by these routers without the need to be a networking guru. And my thanks to @thiggins for providing us with a place to stay. We might be noisy tenants at times, and for that I apologize
Have safe and happy Holiday everyone, and let's hope for a brighter
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