On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 4:58 AM, Frank Rowand <frowand.list@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 2/19/2014 1:15 PM, Grant Likely wrote: >> On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Frank Rowand <frowand.list@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> On 2/19/2014 1:08 AM, Sascha Hauer wrote: >>>> On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 02:44:15PM -0800, Tim Bird wrote: >>>>> I'm not in favor of separating the device tree information from the kernel. >>>>> >>>>> If we switch, then whatever synchronization issues other projects >>>>> are having now with synching with the device tree info from the kernel will >>>>> just then become the problem of the kernel developers, who will then >>>>> have to sync with the device tree info from another repository. If the >>>>> sync issues can't be solved now for them, why or how would it be solved >>>>> post-separation for us? (It sounds like a zero-sum game of pain transfer >>>>> to me.) >>>>> >>>>> I'm relatively unfamiliar with the arguments. Can someone provide >>>>> a brief list of reasons this is needed, and how the inconvenience to Linux >>>>> kernel developers will be minimized, should it proceed? >>>> >>> >>> >>>> One of the reasons for doing devicetrees is to separate the hardware >>>> description from the code so that: >>>> - Other OSes (and bootloaders) can use the same description to start on >>>> a given hardware >>>> - A generic Kernel can be started on any hardware >>>> - A hardware describes itself, makes itself more introspecitve so we can >>>> go away from very specialized kernels >>> >>> Tim knows this ^^^^. He was asking for the arguments for moving dts files >>> out of the linux kernel source tree. >> >> We've made the decision that devicetree bindings need to be treated as >> ABI, but as long as the .dts files live in the kernel there will >> always be the temptation to just tweak things in lock-step and nobody >> will notice. Splitting the files out gives that extra push to think >> about whether changes to a binding will backwards compatible with a >> tree that doesn't have those changes because the chances are a lot >> higher that someone will hit that combination. >> >> The other argument is shared source between >> BSD/U-Boot/Barebox/Linux/etc. Until we have a separate .dts repo there >> is no good way to share the database of hardware descriptions. > > We could provide an easy export (see below). What do you think? Ian Campbell is already maintaining an export tree as a staging area for an eventual split. He's had it up and running for almost a year now: http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/ianc/device-tree-rebasing.git g. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe devicetree-spec" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
