Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] Remove some e300/MPC83xx evaluation platforms

[Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>]

Le 28/02/2023 à 18:51, Arnd Bergmann a écrit :
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023, at 11:03, Joakim Tjernlund wrote:
>> On Mon, 2023-02-27 at 14:48 -0600, Li Yang wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here, we remove the MPC8548E-MDS[1], the MPC8360E-MDS[2], the
>>>>>> MPC837xE-MDS[3], and the MPC832x-MDS[4] board support from the kernel.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There will still exist several e300 Freescale Reference Design System (RDS)
>>>>>> boards[5] and mini-ITX boards[6] with support in the kernel.  While these
>>>>>> were more of a COTS "ready to deploy" design more suited to hobbyists, it
>>>>>> probably makes sense to consider removing these as well, based on age.
>>>>>
>>>>> These boards are mass market boards that sold in larger amount and are much more likely to still be used.  We would suggest we keep them for now.
>>
>> Agreed, the RDS design is still used here.
> 
> Can you elaborate what the typical kernel upgrade schedule for
> these boards?
> 
> Note that for the debate about dropping the machines from future
> kernels, it does not really matter how many remaining users there
> are or how many boards get sold. The only question is whether
> someone is still planning to provide upgrades to kernels later
> than linux-6.3 in the future.
> 
> It sounds like there are commercial requirements for validating
> and distributing kernel upgrades (in addition to hobbyist uses), so
> I would expect that whoever is paying for the upgrades has a clear
> plan for how much longer they are going to do that, or at least
> a some idea of how many of the previous LTS kernels (5.10, 5.15,
> 6.1) ended up actually getting shipped to users.
> 
> It may be worth pointing out that the official webpage for
> the MPC8313ERDB board in the example only lists a hilariously
> outdated BSP kernel based on a patched linux-2.6.23 release,
> so maybe the marketing team can change that to point to the
> latest validated LTS kernel instead.

Let me present things in a slightly different way.

My company has designed and manufactured and sold communication systems 
embedding three types of boards:
- First generation, with MPC 866, designed around 2002.
- Second generation, with MPC 885, designed around 2010.
- Third generation, with MPC 8321, designed around 2014.

When NXP announced end of life of MPC 866 and 885, we bought enough CPUs 
to be able to produce boards for the 10 following years so we still 
produce some.

MPC 8321 is still in production.

All those boards are used in critical systems where we have a customer 
requirement to keep all software including U-boot and Linux kernel up to 
date, for IT security reason mainly.

Until now, the boards were delivered with kernel 4.14, with is due to 
EOL early next year.
At the moment we are working on upgrading to mainline kernel with the 
target being to be able to upgrade our customers to next LTS kernel at 
the begining of 2024.

Note that because our kernel code is prehistoric, it is not mergeable to 
mainline. Not because of licence issues but because the code is just not 
following at all linux standard. So our boards are not in mainline. Two 
of them are in U-boot and the third one should soon be as well.

So, to come back about the RDB boards, we have a couple of MPC 885 ADS 
and a couple of MPC 8321 RDB. They are reference boards and we always 
check that a given kernel version properly runs on them before starting 
to port it to our hardware.

Hope it clarifies how those reference boards are used.

Christophe