[LEDE-DEV] Convert ar71xx to devicetree

[Felix Fietkau]

On 2016-12-08 17:31, John Crispin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> i was planning to start working on this in early 2017. i was hoping that
> rather than converting ar71xx to DT we simply create a new target called
> ath79 and start moving board support over from the legacy to the new
> target. this would allow us to make the ath79 target much cleaner than
> having to worry about legacy cruft.
> 
> converting all the mach files to dts files is also a bit tricky. back in
> the day when i converted ramips, i simply create a host lib that
> provided all the platform_*() callbacks used by the mach files. however
> rather than register anything the code simply generated the matching dts
> files. this was really ugly, run once and throw away code.
> 
> can you share the patches you have already created ? i think we could
> start working on this now and once the new ath79 target starts to be
> usable we simply refuse to merge patches to ar71xx and only accept ones
> for ath79
I think making this a separate target will make the transition period a
lot more confusing for users. I think it should not be too hard to
support both DT and non-DT devices with the same kernel.

I fully agree with refusing to accept non-DT device support once a few
devices work with DT.

- Felix