On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 03:42:15PM +0200, 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@xxxxxxxxxx/ > > > > Signed-off-by: Neil Armstrong <neil.armstrong@xxxxxxxxxx> > > 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. > > 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@xxxxxxxx> Sounds reasonable, so also Acked-by: Daniel Golle <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> (but I am a bit sad about it anyway. without SMP it doesn't make sense to keep ox820 though)
