Support for ASUS XT8

[SirLouen]

I've noticed that in the last version XT12 was supported by Merlin but I see that XT8 is not supported yet and I have not seen any threads talking about this

Any plans on supporting this device?

 

[Piotrek]

Any plans on supporting this device?

No.
See Gnuton https://gnuton.github.io/asuswrt-merlin.ng/

 

[SirLouen]

No.
See Gnuton https://gnuton.github.io/asuswrt-merlin.ng/

May I ask why not? What issues are hindering this support to require a fork?

 

[Piotrek]

What issues

Time, time, need and more time.

[FAQ] READ ME FIRST before posting a question

Model support Q: Will you support the RT-xxxxxx that was just announced? A: See detailed answer in post #3. Q: Will you support router XYZ from this non-Asus manufacturer? A: No. Asuswrt-Merlin only targets Asus-supported models, due to both technical and legal reasons. Q: I'm having...

www.snbforums.com

 

[SirLouen]

Time, time, need and more time.

[FAQ] READ ME FIRST before posting a question

Model support Q: Will you support the RT-xxxxxx that was just announced? A: See detailed answer in post #3. Q: Will you support router XYZ from this non-Asus manufacturer? A: No. Asuswrt-Merlin only targets Asus-supported models, due to both technical and legal reasons. Q: I'm having...

www.snbforums.com

I mean, if someone has been able to fork and support it, why not simply integrating on the upstream code like in OpenWRT for example.

Unless that Merlin code, is exclusively maintained by @RMerlin, which then everything would make sense (because he doesn't simply have the router or whatever)

 

[Piotrek]

is exclusively maintained by @RMerlin,

Only Eric does everything. He's the man, he's the king, he's the Merlin

 

[SirLouen]

Only Eric does everything. He's the man, he's the king, he's the Merlin

I fear these one-man projects

I wonder why it has not been opened like OpenWRT (given that there are more people like GNUTon that seem to be willing to expand the base code)

If something happens to him firmware will eventually go obsolete and back to stock

 

[RMerlin]

I wonder why it has not been opened like OpenWRT

It is open. Everything is on Github. Nothing is stopping other developers from contributing. That's how forks like Gnuton's came to existence as well. Themiron also contributed a fair amount of work for a few years, before moving on to other projects.

In the case of model addition, the problem isn't just he amount of work involved in adding support for it. It's the additional amount of work required for every single new release, as each model needs to have its own GPL archive prepared by Asus, and then merged by me. Having Asus prepare each GPLs for the current list of supported models currently takes them around 6 weeks each time. Add to that the amount of time it takes me afterward to merge these GPLs, and debug them. I have already pushed the number of supported models too far for the amount of time it takes for each new releases.