Re: [PATCH v7 0/8] Pegasos2 emulation

[BALATON Zoltan <balaton@eik.bme.hu>]

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On Tue, 16 Mar 2021, Laurent Vivier wrote:
> Le 16/03/2021 à 13:24, BALATON Zoltan a écrit :
>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021, Laurent Vivier wrote:
>>> Le 16/03/2021 à 12:49, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé a écrit :
>>>> On 3/16/21 10:01 AM, Laurent Vivier wrote:
>>>>> Le 15/03/2021 à 13:33, BALATON Zoltan a écrit :
>>>>>> On Sat, 13 Mar 2021, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wed, 10 Mar 2021, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've started posting this series well in advance to get it into 6.0 and yet it seems like it may
>>>>>>> be missing it due to organisational issues (no real complaints were found with patches but
>>>>>>> Philippe seems to like more review that does not seem to happen as nobody is interested). Looks
>>>>>>> like David is waiting for an ack from Philippe but will be away next week so if this is not
>>>>>>> resolved now it may be too late on Monday. To avoid that:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> David, could you please send an ack before you leave for the last two patches so it could get
>>>>>>> committed via some other tree while you're away?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Philippe, if you can't ack the vt82c686 patches now are you OK with taking the whole series via
>>>>>>> your tree before the freeze? That would give you some more days to review and it could always be
>>>>>>> reverted during the freeze but if it's not merged now I'll have to wait until the summer to
>>>>>>> get it
>>>>>>> in again which would be another long delay. I don't think this will get more reviews unless it's
>>>>>>> in master and people can start using and testing it better.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Since David seems to be away for this week before seeing my mail asking for an ack from him, now
>>>>>> this can only get in by Philippe or Peter. (David said before he'd be OK with the series if
>>>>>> Philippe
>>>>>> acked it so I think that can count as an implicit ack and it could always be reverted before the
>>>>>> releease.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Philippe, do you have anything against this to get merged now? If not please send a pull or ack it
>>>>>> so it has a chance to be in 6.0 or tell if you still intend to do anything about it before the
>>>>>> freeze. This series was on the list since January and the remaining parts you did not take are
>>>>>> here
>>>>>> since February 22nd and the version after your first review since two weeks so it would be nice to
>>>>>> sort this out and not block it any further without a good reason.
>>>>>
>>>>> Pegasos looks like a New World PowerMac, so perhaps Mark can help?
>>>>
>>>> The PPC part is mostly reviewed. The problem is the first patch:
>>>> "vt82c686: Implement control of serial port io ranges via config regs".
>>>
>>> vt82c686.c is a Fuloong 2E file, why Fuloong 2E maintainers are not involved in the review?
>>
>> Philippe is MIPS maintainer and he was involved and reviewed most patches. Huacai did not respond
>> much and Jiaxun's email adress is constantly stripped by the list so whenrver I add him it will be
>> lost the next time. He seems to be more interested in Fuloong 3 anyway so did not respond much either.
>>
>> All in all I think there's just not enough interest in these machines/devices so my stance is that
>> if it does not break anything just take it now and then we'll have enough time for further review,
>> fixing or reverting during the freeze. Whereas if this is kept pushing back then nothing will happen
>> with them for the next 2-3 months then we'll be back to here and miss the next release as well.
>
> The PATCH 1 doesn't seem to be needed to have a working Pegasos 2 machine, does it?

It is needed (as well as all other patches in the series). Patch 1 is 
needed for getting serial output which is the only way to communicate with 
the Pegasos2 firmware so it's really hard to boot anything without it.

> If the problem is only with the first patch perhaps you can remove it to have it merged and come
> back later with a cleaner implementation (it is presented to be a hack)?

I'll try to explain it again in another message but there's no cleaner 
solution available without much more work than I want to take up. To do it 
a more cleaner way ISA emulation would need to be QOM'ified that I won't 
do. This solution is a hack in that it pokes the isa-serial device from a 
superclass but there's no easier and cleaner way to do it so this should 
be good enough for now and it has the lowest chance to break anything 
else.

> I think PATCH 6 can already be merged, and PATCH 2 can be done outside of the series as a pre-requisite.
>
> Then it will be easier to manage a series only adding devices for your new machine.

It's all or nothing I'm afraid as all these pathces are needed for 
pegasos2 to work so taking only a few of them won't let users use it in 
6.0.

Regards,
BALATON Zoltan