linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] asm-generic updates for v6.7

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Message-ID: <CAHtyXDekSghk0wOwNz7_PG9xC+9+-wr4VTYN-uMVShh9UcxE3w@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Thu, 2 Nov 2023 20:15:43 +0100
From:   Tomáš Glozar <tglozar@...il.com>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner@....de>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, linux-ia64@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Linux-Arch <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@...nel.org>,
        John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@...sik.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] asm-generic updates for v6.7

čt 2. 11. 2023 v 18:29 odesílatel Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> napsal:
>
> Well, I'd have personally been willing to resurrect it, but I was told
> several times that other projects were basically just waiting for the
> kernel support to die.
>

That's understandable, thank you for clarifying that. I was wondering
why Itanium and not Alpha, PA-RISC etc., this seems to give a clue to
that.

>
> The thing is, nobody doing new kernel code wants to deal with itanium,
> so relegating it to the same situation that i386 support was ("it
> still works in old kernels") doesn't seem to be a huge issue for the
> people who actually want to use those machines.
>
> That said, I'd be willing to resurrect itanium support, even though I
> personally despise the architecture with a passion for being
> fundamentally based on faulty design premises, and an implementation
> based on politics rather than good technical design.
>
> But only if it turns out to actually have some long-term active
> interest (ie I'd compare it to the situation with m68k etc - clearly
> dead architectures that we still support despite them being not
> relevant - because some people care and they don't cause pain).
>
> So I'd be willing to come back to the "can we resurrect it"
> discussion, but not immediately - more along the lines of a "look,
> we've been maintaining it out of tree for a year, the other
> infrastructure is still alive, there is no impact on the rest of the
> kernel, can we please try again"?

I agree with Adrian, that sounds very reasonable to me. If we want
Itanium to stay in kernel and it is a burden to other developers, it
is fair that we take the burden on us for the time being even if it
means overhead from maintaning an out-of-tree patch. For reference, I
already created a fork:
https://github.com/lenticularis39/linux-ia64/tree/master-revert-ia64-removal
and will try to maintain it building and working.

Also, I will see whether it is feasible to maintain it out-of-tree in
the following months, and if I manage to do so, I will have a much
better argument on why I should maintain it in-tree than my previous
"Hi, I heard you are deleting Itanium. I have only one unrelated
two-line commit in the kernel but I have a machine and will try to
maintain it, please don't remove it" post
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ia64/CAHtyXDfvS4OYLjOqALy74vR4w9DOFjJ9z8UOFeDpyjv7_PHNXw@mail.gmail.com/).
As I'm also a maintainer of the T2 SDE distribution, I will keep
building and testing it as part of it (there is even an enthusiast in
our community who runs Itanium Linux daily for some tasks).

I will revisit the topic here in case the effort succeeds for a longer
amount of time.

Tomas