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

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Message-ID: <CAK8P3a0StV==jMq1L9k91qEsvRD1Cw2FB1V25wr1AQqzmjsTVw@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Mon, 22 Jul 2019 16:44:06 +0200
From:   Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To:     Greg Ungerer <gerg@...nel.org>
Cc:     Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>,
        Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>,
        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 Sat, May 4, 2019 at 4:27 PM Greg Ungerer <gerg@...nel.org> wrote:
> On 4/5/19 3:06 am, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > 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:
> >>> 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.

Looking around on the internet, I found that Micrel at some point
had their own openwrt fork for ks8695, but I can't find a copy
any more, as the micrel.com domain is no longer used after the
acquisition by Microchip.

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Micrel has a list of devices based on
ks8695, and it seems that most of these are rather memory
limited, which is a problem for recent openwrt builds.

Only two of the 17 listed devices have the absolute minimum of 4MB
flash and 32MB RAM for openwrt, two more have 8/32 and one
or two have 4/64, but all these configurations are too limited for the
web U/I now.

> >> 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.
>
> Well, I for one don't really use it any more. So I don't have a lot
> of motivation to maintain it any longer.

I came across my patches while rebasing my backlog to 5.3-rc1.

Should I save the (very small) trouble of sending them out again
and just remove the platform then?

      Arnd