linux-kernel - Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead

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Date:   Sun, 10 Jan 2021 20:20:36 +0100
From:   Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...nel.org>
To:     Fabian Vogt <fabian@...ter-vogt.de>
Cc:     Daniel Tang <dt.tangr@...il.com>, Baruch Siach <baruch@...s.co.il>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert+renesas@...der.be>,
        Neil Armstrong <narmstrong@...libre.com>,
        Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@...aro.org>,
        Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>,
        Jamie Iles <jamie@...ieiles.com>,
        Krzysztof Adamski <krzysztof.adamski@...ia.com>,
        Alexander Shiyan <shc_work@...l.ru>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        Wei Xu <xuwei5@...ilicon.com>,
        Oleksij Rempel <o.rempel@...gutronix.de>,
        Alex Elder <elder@...aro.org>,
        Marc Gonzalez <marc.w.gonzalez@...e.fr>,
        Hans Ulli Kroll <ulli.kroll@...glemail.com>,
        Uwe Kleine-König 
        <u.kleine-koenig@...gutronix.de>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Vladimir Zapolskiy <vz@...ia.com>,
        Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak@...sk>,
        Koen Vandeputte <koen.vandeputte@...ntric.com>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        Barry Song <song.bao.hua@...ilicon.com>,
        Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@...ha.franken.de>,
        Yoshinori Sato <ysato@...rs.sourceforge.jp>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Jonas Jensen <jonas.jensen@...il.com>,
        Hartley Sweeten <hsweeten@...ionengravers.com>,
        Mark Salter <msalter@...hat.com>,
        Shawn Guo <shawnguo@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 7:12 PM Fabian Vogt <fabian@...ter-vogt.de> wrote:
> Am Samstag, 9. Januar 2021, 23:20:48 CET schrieb Arnd Bergmann:
> > On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 1:06 AM Daniel Tang <dt.tangr@...il.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Arnd,
> > >
> > > On 9 Jan 2021, at 9:55 am, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...nel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > * nspire -- added in 2013, no notable changes after 2015
>
> Most of the platform is just the DT sources and some small drivers around it,
> so it's actually fairly low maintenance. So far the migration away from
> panel-simple in 2019
> (https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20190805085847.25554-1-linus.walleij@linaro.org)
> was the biggest required change so far.

Sure, there is no problem in keeping it around as long as it is used.
There were a couple of platforms that had not seen a lot of changes
in the past five years but that are still in active use, I just used it as
an indication that I should ask about the status. A lot of the other
platforms that list only ever had an incomplete port and were
abandoned before they were fully supported in upstream kernels.

> > Would either of you already have a guess for how long it makes
> > sense to update kernels on it?
> >
> > I see that this is one of the more limited platforms with just 32MB
> > of RAM (64MB in case of CX), and kernels only get more bloated over
> > time, so I expect at some point you will be stuck with running old
> > software.
>
> The kernel overhead isn't actually that bad. I just built today's 2ff90100ace8
> and booted it with a busybox-based initrd. free -m reports:
> total used free shared buffers
>    58   12   46      0       0
>
> Relatively speaking, still mostly unused ;-) The stock OS actually uses more!
> With 32MiB, the situation is definitely worse, but still manageable. Should
> that change in the future, dropping just the Classic/CM variants would be a
> possible option, but that still seems far enough away.

Ok, makes sense.

> > Wikipedia tells me that new models came out recently. Are you
> > planning to add support for those as well?
>
> Yes, someone from the community actually managed to boot Linux on a CX II-T,
> and I'm hoping to get that upstreamed soon. Most of the hardware changes are
> supported by drivers already and so this is mainly just another device tree.

Nice!

       Arnd