Integration tests with hardware
Describe the problem
Wireless drivers are messy. There is a lot of configuration required in order to get them working properly and the distributions do not always get it right. It is important to know how well irdest works across a variety of operating systems and hardware. Checking the feature list at https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers is not necessarily sufficient because every device has its own quirks. Sometimes drivers have features that do not really work as well as claimed.
Proposed solution
It would be nice to have something an automated test rig for verifying compatibility. Unfortunately, here in Canada, hackerspaces and hardware libraries basically no longer exist. I personally do not want to own dozens of unique wireless adapters.
The entire stack would need to be tested. One could netboot a computer with the desired distribution, driver configurations and then run a test suite. There would also need to be another device with a known good stack (perhaps the same computer that handles the netbooting) that can act both as a client and an AP depending on the tests that need to run.
For an example set up, something like this might be a decent testbed design to start with?
http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/developers/GSoC/2009/Automation_of_testing/
It looks like it might be possible to do some testing in conjunction with a university. In my experience, it can be like pulling teeth trying to organize even relatively simple things with university admins.
Unfortunately, the wiki does not provide very much information on how the linux-wireless group does their testing