I have posted an initial copy of my patch for machine detection, namespace cleanup, and promlib abstraction at http://foobazco.org/~wesolows/mips64-machine.diff. This is against 2.4.2 CURRENT oss. It currently passes my regression testsuite which unfortunately does not include an ip27 boot test. There are several goals to this patch: to be able to support multiple machines with a single kernel binary; to reduce code duplication among the various machines, and to provide a well-defined architecture for a future increase in the number and diversity of systems we support. This patch affects mips64 only at this time. However, it will be ported to the 32-bit mips tree following comment. It is also incomplete - I know for a fact that certain pci functions need this kind of abstraction as well, and the promlib support is fairly minimal. The accompanying documentation, while useful especially for new porters, is slightly out of date already. For those (embedded systems people) who think the ability to support multiple machines in a single kernel is useless bloat, consider instead that you will have significantly less code to maintain and to write, since more functionality will be provided by generic functions. No more copying the generic files, changing three lines, and having to maintain the copies forever. This patch as written adds less than 300 net lines of code to the kernel (the entire difference is contained in __init functions), and when finished will probably result in single-machine kernels which are approximately the same size as current versions. Please offer your comments. Barring a shockingly brutal rejection of the fundamental principles, I fully expect this to be integrated by 2.5.x for mips and mips64. Speak now or forever hold your peace. If you are interested, this code is also being maintained in cvs at cvs.foobazco.org, username cvs, password cvs, repository linux. This is not a fork; the patches will either be put into oss or dropped. This tree also has early 64-bit SGI O2 support based on work by Harald Koerfgen, nick@snowman.net, and me. -- Keith M Wesolowski <wesolows@foobazco.org> http://foobazco.org/~wesolows ------(( Project Foobazco Coordinator and Network Administrator ))------ "I should have crushed his marketing-addled skull with a fucking bat."
