[PATCH V3 1/3] dts: change Marvell prefix to 'marvell'

Daniel Drake dsd at laptop.org
Fri Jul 12 11:10:49 EDT 2013


On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Haojian Zhuang
<haojian.zhuang at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Well, Daniel Drake spoke up for OLPC.  Does that count?
>
> We don't know they used DT on Marvell MMP2/MMP3. So they don't have DTS file
> in kernel, we could use both old name & new name in driver.

You are listed as one of the MMP maintainers in the MAINTAINERS file
and I have sent you several patches in the few 3 weeks which make
OLPC's usage of MMP + DT pretty obvious. As a maintainer I believe you
are supposed to review the patches too. hint hint ;)

My request to avoid breaking compatibility actually comes as a
two-prong request.

I would prefer to see these compatible properties stay the same as it
seems like changing them has little purpose/benefit - and there *will*
become a later point where changing them causes major breakage.

At the same time I see that there have been recent efforts to remove
MMP2 platform code and make it entirely DT-driven, which could also
generate some compatibility concerns. However, such movements are much
appreciated and I think they will become increasingly necessary as we
bring up the devices on the MMP3 SoC to a fuller extent, so please
continue :) I would not want to discourage you from breaking
compatibility when *that* type of work needs to be done.


So: breaking compatibility is actually OK from my standpoint, but only
for now (while we stabilise), and I would advise/appreciate that it
only be done in cases where there is a clear purpose and benefit.

Daniel



More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list