Re: [PATCH v2 1/9] vgacon: rework Kconfig dependencies

[Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Arnd,

On Fri, Jul 21, 2023 at 10:29 AM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2023, at 06:59, Michael Ellerman wrote:
> > Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
> >>
> >> The list of dependencies here is phrased as an opt-out, but this is missing
> >> a lot of architectures that don't actually support VGA consoles, and some
> >> of the entries are stale:
> >>
> >>  - powerpc used to support VGA consoles in the old arch/ppc codebase, but
> >>    the merged arch/powerpc never did
> >
> > Not disputing this, but how did you come to that conclusion? I grepped
> > around and couldn't convince myself whether it can work on powerpc or
> > not. ie. currently it's possible to enable CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE and
> > powerpc does have a struct screen_info defined which seems like it would
> > allow vgacon_startup() to complete.
>
> The VGA console needs both screen_info and vga_con to work. In arch/ppc
> we had both, but in arch/powerpc we only retained the screen_info:
>
> $ git grep vga_con v2.6.26 -- arch/ppc arch/ppc64 arch/powerpc
> v2.6.26:arch/ppc/platforms/pplus.c:     conswitchp = &vga_con;
> v2.6.26:arch/ppc/platforms/prep_setup.c:        conswitchp = &vga_con;
>
> so after arch/ppc was removed, this became impossible to use on both
> pplus and prep. These two platforms were also (as far as I can tell)
> the only ones to support vga16fb as an alternative to vgacon, but
> both platforms were removed later on.

I did use vgacon and vga16fb on CHRP on a second video card
(initialized using Gabriel Paubert's x86 BIOS emulator), but that was
definitely before the advent of arch/powerpc/.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds