linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/6] ARM: ks8695: watchdog: stop using mach/*.h

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Message-ID: <20190503170613.GA1783@roeck-us.net>
Date:   Fri, 3 May 2019 10:06:13 -0700
From:   Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>
To:     Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>
Cc:     Greg Ungerer <gerg@...inux.org>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        arm-soc <arm@...nel.org>,
        Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@...ux-watchdog.org>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        LINUXWATCHDOG <linux-watchdog@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/6] ARM: ks8695: watchdog: stop using mach/*.h

On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 08:16:05AM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 8:02 AM Greg Ungerer <gerg@...inux.org> wrote:
> 
> > I dug out some old ks8695 based hardware to try this out.
> > I had a lot of trouble getting anything modern working on it.
> > In the end I still don't have a reliable test bed to test this properly.
> 
> What is usually used by old ARMv4 systems is OpenWrt or
> OpenEmbedded. Those is the only build systems that reliably
> produce a userspace for these things now, and it is also the
> appropriate size for this kind of systems.
> 
> > Ultimately though I am left wondering if the ks8695 support in the
> > kernel is useful to anyone the way it is at the moment. With a minimal
> > kernel configuration I can boot up to a shell - but the system is
> > really unreliable if you try to interactively use it. I don't think
> > it is the hardware - it seems to run reliably with the old code
> > it has running from flash on it. I am only testing the new kernel,
> > running with the existing user space root filesystem on it (which
> > dates from 2004 :-)
> 
> Personally I think it is a bad sign that this subarch and boards do
> not have active OpenWrt support, they are routers after all (right?)
> and any active use of networking equipment should use a recent
> userspace as well, given all the security bugs that popped up over
> the years.
> 
> With IXP4xx, Gemini and EP93xx we have found active users and
> companies selling the chips and reference designs and even
> recommending it for new products (!) at times.  If this is not the
> case with KS8695 and no hobbyists are willing to submit it
> to OpenWrt and modernize it to use device tree I think it should be
> deleted from the kernel.
> 

That may be the best approach if indeed no one is using it,
much less maintaining it.

Guenter