Update: ARM Sub-Architecture Maintainers workshop at Kernel Summit 2011

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2011, Igor Grinberg wrote:

> On 09/27/11 16:25, Igor Grinberg wrote:
> > On 08/30/11 09:00, Grant Likely wrote:
> >> Still accepting more proposals.  Send me the topics you are burning to discuss.
> > 
> > One of the LPC2011's bottom lines was:
> > "We need more people involved in ARM maintainership to help
> > the sub-architecture maintainers do a better job on
> > review/consolidation/generalization/etc. of the code."
> > 
> > Despite the major goal of the DT to reduce the SoC and
> > board specific code to absolute minimum, there will still be cases
> > (e.g. discrete power management circuitry) when there is no
> > appropriate DT solution available and the board file
> > is a necessity. Also there are already many boards that will remain
> > and will not be converted to DT.
> > 
> > Bringing all the above together, I'd like to propose a new "job"
> > for maintaining board specific code on a cross-platform basis.
> > 
> > Pros:
> > 1) There might (I have not checked this, but I'm sure there is) be
> > code in the existing board files (that are not likely to go away
> > at least in a couple of years) that can be consolidated and
> > may be even in a cross-platform manner.
> > 2) Lower the work load from SoC maintainers (that don't have enough
> > time to care much about the board specific changes).
> > 3) Some more eyes to review the newly submitted code.
> > 
> > Cons:
> > 1) Resulting overhead for the code to go upstream.
> > 2) Possible addition of merge conflicts.
> > 
> > 
> > I'd like to hear, what do you think of the above proposal?
> 
> Any thoughts? Yes? No? Why? WTF?

Well...  Please see http://lwn.net/Articles/443510/.

Since then,  ARnd Bergmann has led the arm-soc repository maintenance 
effort as you might have noticed.  Other cleanup/consolidation projects 
are also progressing in parallel.

Obviously, as always, we would always benefit from more reviewers and 
more people in maintainership roles.  The general situation has improved 
since a couple months ago, but any additional suggestions you might have 
will always be welcome.


Nicolas