Hi Arnd, On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 09:38:30AM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 4:40 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:12:45 -0800 Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On 2/23/22 18:33, Steven Rostedt wrote: > > > > On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 17:53:00 -0800 > > > > Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > > >> On 2/23/22 17:44, Randy Dunlap wrote: > > > >>> Hi ktr, bouncing NDS32 maintainer, Andrew, Steven, > > > >>> > > > >> > > > >> [now adding Andrew and Steven!] > > > > > > > > This needs to go via the NDS32 maintainers. If it's being ignored, then > > > > we can consider the architecture as orphaned and start the process of > > > > removal. ;-) > > > > > > Yes, it appears to be about that time... > > > > Hi Arnd, > > > > Just putting this on your "chopping block" radar. > > Yes, that makes sense. I think nds32 was always going to be a > short-lived architecture as Andestech was already in the process of > moving to RISC-V before it was ever submitted upstream. I did > hope that it would live a little longer, but it seems that everyone who > ever worked on it in mainline has left andestech by now. > > I'm guessing Nick's current email address based on his Linkedin page, > maybe he can contact someone who is still there and able to > take over. I am in charge of this now. > > I think nds32 is still in a better shape than a lot of the older > architectures in mainline, and the CPU cores are still actively > marketed for licensing. OTOH it only gets worse if nobody cares > about the code, and users are probably already better off with > one of the older longterm supported kernels. If we remove > arch/nds32 before the next longterm release, that gives users > stable updates until late 2026 using linux-5.10.y, which is > probably sufficient. > > Arnd All of our nds32 customers maintain their own kernel derived from previous LTS versions. Also, we (as the Linux team in Andes) now dedicate our whole effort to RISC-V, so there is no longer need to maintain arch/nds32. We really appreciate your guidance and support. Many thanks to the community as well. Alan
