Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 10:15 PM Mattias Wallin <mattias.wallin@se.com> wrote:
> >On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 12:10 PM Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org> wrote:
> >> On 08-01-21, 23:55, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> >> > * spear -- added in 2010, no notable changes since 2015
> >>
> >> I started an email chain with the ST folks to see if there are any
> >> concerns with this getting removed and it was confirmed by Mattias
> >> (Cc'd) from Schneider Electric (one of SPEAr's customers) that they
> >> indeed use mainline on spear320s and the spear1380 boards, while they
> >> also have access to spear1310 board which they don't use that often.
>
> > Thank you for reaching out to them!
>
> > Do we actually support spear1380 with the mainline kernel? I've
> > never seen anything other than 1310 and 1340 models mentioned.
> > If Schneider have additional patches on top of mainline for this,
> > it would be good to get those merged as well. Is there a kernel
> > source tree available somewhere?
>
> > Rob Herring had mentioned that it would be nice to see SPEAr
> > get removed eventually because it was only partially converted
> > to devicetree, with some AUXDATA() (on 300/310/320/6xx) and
> > some dmaengine channel data still in source format. These need
> > to be finished before we can kill off AUXDATA.
>
> Thanks for taking the time Arnd and Viresh
>
> The spear1380 is not supported in mainline but it's quite similar to 1310 and 1340.
> The spear13xx comes in a few flavors. 1310 and 1340 are the standard ones sold by ST and the 1380 are the customized version for Schneider Electric needs. One part of the chip is customizable but the base is the same in all 13xx. So a few IP blocks differ between the flavors. I can try to send you the 1380 stuff as well.
>
> There is currently no external source tree for our kernel easy available.
>
> If the AUXDATA on 3xx is a problem I can try to start focus on sending for patches in that area. We have patches that move some more parts over to devicetree (compared to mainline) but we haven't converted all. I will investigate if we have something that helps in that area.

This sounds great, thanks! I think the main work that needs to
be done here is to convert the DT over to use the regular
dma-controller binding (as used on spear13xx) for the pl080.
Please contact Vinod Koul, Linus Walleij and me in a separate
email thread if you have questions about that.

Looking forward to getting those patches,

      Arnd