I've got ACwifidude older pre-built NSS enabled image for OnHub installed on both the Asus and TP-Link versions of the router. It's based on a SNAPSHOT version of OpenWrt. With much experimentation I've got everything working the way I want it to. But... what I'd like is a nice, clean sysugrade image using the 23.05.3 stable build as much as possible.
I'm not quite at the level to do the make and build from source myself and there isn't a walkthrough to hold my hand. So, I know this is a bit lame, but I'm asking the experts to compile as stable an image as possible for us OnHub users to install and use for the remainder of the useful life of this router since future versions of OpenWrt are going to focus on WiFi 6 and won't support NSS builds.
I imagine ACwifidude has tweaked his source substantially and can by now put out a streamlined version with the latest stable sources. Just asking. I'm sure it will be popular because the CPU and hardware of this router is mostly wasted as is.
Update: I was able to compile a binary on my own and no longer need assistance.
a) OpenWrt does not support NSS (and won't), so you need to take that question up with the authors of the corresponding community builds, just be aware that they only care about the kind of builds they need and use themselves, so don't expect too much. If you have 'unique' requirements, you might have to do the required work needed yourself.
b) there can never is a stable NSS release, just due to the nature of it. OpenWrt itself doesn't have support for it - and the required changes are very invasive (the kernel ABI will change, massively). This means while you could base the NSS support on OpenWrt's stable code base, doing so will make the result different enough to be incompatible with OpenWrt's normal (binary-) package feeds, so (apart from very trivial arch-independent packages) you won't be able to install additional packages anyways (unless provided by the community build)
While building and providing OpenWrt images (including streamlined community builds) is relatively easy, 'building everything' a potential user might want to install requires serious processing power (hours++), huge amounts web storage and generates large amounts of traffic, you quickly hit the limits of what volunteers are willing to provide. A 'normal' build may compile in 15-45 minutes (my personal builds complete in under 20 minutes per target) on reasonably modern hardware and within ~20-30 GB scratch space, building 'everything' may take well over a day and requires hundreds of GB build storage.
This is a variation of "beggars can't be choosers", the community builds are largely what they are, according to the needs and personal interest of the relevant authors - you may be able to nudge them to make easy and smaller changes for you, but if you expect something totally different, you may have to put in the necessary work yourself.
Thank you for this reply. It makes sense. Not being able to make the image myself is a (the) problem. I would if I could and I must endeavour to learn that process. What I have seems stable enough, so I can settle or go back to the stable code base. The degree of difficulty and time involved was not clear to me.
I actually figured it out and compiled a working image myself. I recently tried to compile it again using 23.05.4 sources, but the NSS drivers @KONG has in his repo have been patched and they no longer compile correctly for the OnHubs. But, the version I have is working well with no errors and good speed, so I'm not going to F with it for a while.
Here are links to the pre-built binaries I compiled with a combination of 23.05.3 stable, SNAPSHOT, @KONG and @ACwifidude source code if anyone wants to try them out. I consider them the last best firmware for the OnHubs. Very stable and simple and easy to reflash and start over with it you screw things up.
For those curious, NSS is Qualcomm's hardware network acceleration engine built into their chips. NSS handles routine networking functions, such as packet processing, routing, and firewalling, freeing up the CPU for more demanding tasks. NSS significantly improves network throughput and latency and uses less power.