Re: [PATCH RFC 00/20] ARM: oxnas support removal

[Neil Armstrong <neil.armstrong@linaro.org>]

On 31/03/2023 15:42, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 31, 2023, at 10:34, Neil Armstrong wrote:
>> With [1] removing MPCore SMP support, this makes the OX820 barely usable,
>> associated with a clear lack of maintainance, development and migration to
>> dt-schema it's clear that Linux support for OX810 and OX820 should be removed.
>>
>> In addition, the OX810 hasn't been booted for years and isn't even present
>> in an ARM config file.
>>
>> For the OX820, lack of USB and SATA support makes the platform not usable
>> in the current Linux support and relies on off-tree drivers hacked from the
>> vendor (defunct for years) sources.
>>
>> The last users are in the OpenWRT distribution, and today's removal means
>> support will still be in stable 6.1 LTS kernel until end of 2026.
>>
>> If someone wants to take over the development even with lack of SMP, I'll
>> be happy to hand off maintainance.
>>
>> The plan is to apply the first 4 patches first, then the drivers
>> followed by bindings. Finally the MAINTAINANCE entry can be removed.
>>
>> I'm not sure about the process of bindings removal, but perhaps the bindings
>> should be marked as deprecated first then removed later on ?
>>
>> It has been a fun time adding support for this architecture, but it's time
>> to get over!
>>
>> Patch 2 obviously depends on [1].
>>
>> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230327121317.4081816-1-arnd@kernel.org/
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Neil Armstrong <neil.armstrong@linaro.org>
> 
> Thanks a lot for going through this and preparing the patches!
> 
> I've discussed this with Daniel Golle on the OpenWRT channel as well,
> and he indicated that the timing is probably fine here, as there are
> already close to zero downloads for oxnas builds, and the 6.1 kernel
> will only be part of a release in 2024.
> 
> For the dependency on my other patch, I'd suggest you instead
> remove the SMP files here as well, which means we can merge either
> part independently based on just 6.3-rc. I can do that change
> myself by picking up patches 1-4 of your RFC series, or maybe you
> can send resend them after rebase to 6.3-rc1.

Ack I'll send patches 1-4 rebased on v6.3-rc1 with the acks
and sent a PR next week.

> 
> For the driver removals, I think we can merge those at the same
> time as the platform removal since there are no shared header files
> that would cause build time regressions and there are no runtime
> regressions other than breaking the platform itself. Maybe
> just send the driver removal separately to the subsystem
> maintainers with my
> 
> Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>

Thanks, I'll submit those individually once the first patches are merged.

Neil

> 
>       Arnd