[RFC PATCH 0/3] base board consolidation

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 12:20:08PM +0200, Daniel Mack wrote:
> Yes, I would also much more like to see these boards being supported
> by DT, and eventually, we can probably provide static tree definitions
> for these boards and get rid of the whole code entirely.

While some of that can be done, I think the idea of getting rid of all
the code is a pipedream - things like detecting the LCD panel is
something which has to be in code.

Having separate DT blobs because you happen to have connected a different
LCD display is not sane when you can detect the LCD type at run time -
from either the support perspective or the maintainence perspective.

There's also a similar issue where the ethernet controller may be of
two different types, which can only be detected at runtime - and again
having different DT blobs would be a nightmare.

With that alone, you're talking about 10 different DT blobs (5 different
CLCD panel configs + 2 ethernet configs) for just one Realview board.

There's also the matter of the platform specific registers setting the
clock speed for the SP804 timers.

So no, I don't think that we'll ever get rid of all the code for ARMs
development platforms without losing functionality/utility, but we should
be able to get rid of quite an amount like I've already done by
consolidating across the entire set with plat-versatile.