Re: [GIT PULL] sh: remove sh5 support

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 12:32:07AM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> Hello Rich!
> 
> On 5/29/20 12:14 AM, Rich Felker wrote:
> > To follow up, I see that there was a patch series of yours (3/24) I
> > missed ack'ing fairly recently. At first glance it looks good. It
> > happened to arrive while I was getting over being horribly sick with
> > what I thought was covid19. If there's further action needed on it
> > I'll address it asap now that I'm aware of it.
> 
> Glad to hear from you again! I hope you have fully recovered!

Yes, but it took a good while to get fully better, and according to
tests it wasn't even covid19. Certainly shaped my view on taking the
pandemic seriously at an appropriate time, though!

> > In general, most of the patches I see are things that the linux-sh
> > list and myself end up cc'd on that are only tangentially related to
> > arch/sh or even not related at all. In that case I normally trust
> > other maintainers familiar with the cross-arch changes being made that
> > the small arch/sh part of the change is ok if the broader change is
> > abstractly ok.
> > 
> > Part of why I really disliked the "just kill it all" response to this
> > thread is that the sh5 removal is specifically for the sake of making
> > the arch more maintainable. That, along with forward-porting Sato's
> > SH4 device tree patches (I've tried this but ran into problems, and
> > need some help with it), has long been on my agenda for the arch, to
> > reduce (and ultimately eliminate) the amount of legacy "only on
> > arch/sh" stuff left so that it's not a burden on other maintainers and
> > contributors. Seeing sentiment along the lines of "why don't you just
> > remove it all while you're at it?" as a response is disheartening and
> > also dismissive of Arnd's work making the sh5 removal happen.
> 
> I agree. I have also poured endless hours into Debian's sh4 port fixing
> dozens of bugs myself and reporting them upstream whenever I couldn't
> fix them myself.
> 
> I would also like to add that getting device tree support into SH would
> be a huge leap forward and I would be happy to help with the efforts. I
> still have some LANDISK and NextVoD devices available if anyone needs
> hardware for testing and development, FWIW.

And I still have the NextVoD and LANDISK. The NextVoD is ST-based, so
not supported at all by upstream kernel, only the abandoned stlinux.
I've long wanted to pull support for ST hardware back into mainline,
and I think DT makes this viable rather than just a huge new mess on
top of undermaintained code, but it'll need help to make it happen.

> Would be great to also hear back from Sato-san, he is still active
> on his other Linux trees [1].

Yes.

> > Aside from that, the open source & open hardware J-core models are
> > still active and in development, with the latest release having been
> > made this month, and the J32 with MMU nearly complete and pending
> > release, contingent mostly on integration and testing with Linux.
> 
> And I'm still very much looking forward to these. I will certainly
> buy a bunch of J32 to use them as buildds for Debian's sh4 port!

Great!

Rich