Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> writes: > On Friday 01 April 2011, Detlef Vollmann wrote: >> On 04/01/11 15:54, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > >> > 9. All interesting work is going into a handful of platforms, all of which >> > are ARMv7 based. >> Define interesting. > > The ones that are causing the churn that we're talking about. > Platforms that have been working forever and only need to get > the occasional bug fix are boring, i.e. not the problem. I'm not sure I follow the ARMv7-only thinking either. Picking ARMv7 only would be a good way to avoid part of the problem, but IMO, it doesn't really address the root causes. Part of the ugliness of the platform-specific hackery (and the "churn" to clean some of it up) is precisely due to support for multiple ARM architecture versions, and the various SoCs in a family that use them. For example, linux-omap supports OMAP1 (ARMv5), OMAP2 (ARMv6), OMAP3 (ARMv7) and OMAP4 (ARMv7 SMP), and OMAP2/3/4 in a single binary. Also, since we've only very recently got to the point of being able to support ARMv6 + ARMv7 UP & SMP in the same kernel, making a decision now that only ARMv7 is important seems like a step backwards. If the ultimate goal is getting to a point where we have infrastrucure that can be cross-SoC, surely this same infrastrucure should support multiple ARM architecture revisions. The kernel is only part of many open-source projects, and many of these projects are still using older hardware because it's cheap, available and hackable. Supporting ARMv7 only might be a win for those selling new hardware, but not necessarily a win for the broader open-source community. Kevin (obviously not speaking for my new employer) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-omap" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
