I see another one of my devices will be moving to the DSA architecture in the next major releases of OpenWrt. This is progress of a technical sort but admin-wise it leads to two interface regressions for me as an end-user:
Quick/easy access
When a device switches to DSA, I lose easy top-level access to what I'll call the "VLAN configuration page" (although it also shows general port status, etc.). What I mean is that in older versions of OpenWrt right from the main/top LuCI toolbar it was simply Network > Switch and you were there.
Now with DSA it's a whole little journey that feels like I'm going deep into the bowels, even though the end result is ± the same UI. First load Network > Interfaces and then remember it's not actually an "Interfaces" but in the "Devices" tab, pick which is the right one of those devices to "Configure", and then in that popup finally switch over to the "Bridge VLAN filtering" tab of that.
My guess is that with DSA it maybe enables for the first time the possibility of multiple switches in one device and so perhaps it can't be quite so simple as one top-level page? But I wonder if it would be possible to split the contents of this tab into homes a bit more like what we used to have:
Specifically maybe the "Enable VLAN filtering" could be just a new option on the main device tab, while the whole ports/VLANs table could get moved back to a "Switch" page [or perhaps it would now be a "Switches" page with a section for each one?]
VLAN descriptions
The other thing I miss as more of my devices switch to DSA is how I used to be able to set a memorable description for each of my VLANs:
As compared to the DSA screenshot above, the old table on the top-level Switch page had a "Description" column but the new table within the device(s) configuration popup tab doesn't. Is there a technical reason that's it's no longer possible to track this info, or just something that got lost in the UI shuffle?
Hope this doesn't come off as too complainy — I realize this is [update: found the "feature requests" section and moved this post there] far less of a usage question and more of a development request but otoh since it's basically just "free as in puppy" ideas I didn't want to clutter the development section of the forums either. I'd of course love it if I could simply get "the old UI" back but figured even if that's not possible the discussion of why not (and any benefits the new way brings that I should be appreciating…) might be useful to others too.