[PATCH v2] ARM: remove name from machine_desc for DT platforms

[Rob Herring]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Grant Likely <grant.likely at secretlab.ca> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Rob Herring <robherring2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From: Rob Herring <rob.herring at calxeda.com>
>>
>> As part of the effort to ultimately remove struct machine_desc, the
>> machine name is not really needed. It is only used for /proc/cpuinfo
>> "Hardware" field. Get this information from the DT instead and remove
>> the name string in the machine descriptor for DT machine descriptors. The
>> model or machine compatible property from the DT is used instead.
>
> I've obviously missed some discussions because I wasn't aware of the
> plan to remove machine_desc. That's neither here not there, but for as
> long as the structure still exists it is really useful to discover
> which machine_desc the kernel chooses at boot time. If you're going to
> remove this, then at the very least I would embed the filename or
> something similar into the machine desc so it is available for
> debugging. It can go away when the structure is removed.

It's a very long term goal to remove it completely, but it is now
optional for "simple" platforms with the default machine_desc and
default init ptrs. You might want to look at the patches and the WIP
branch I posted[1] which removes the machine_desc for highbank.
There's some core boilerplate I'd like your opinion on. Also, I'm sure
you are aware of the resistance to add a machine_desc to arm64, so I'm
looking at this from that perspective as well. I'm sure there will be
platforms which look very similar across arm and arm64.

On boot, the model or compatible string from the DTB is printed out
(that change is actually in my DT arch clean-up series, not this
patch). This has made what is printed out on boot consistent across
arches using DT. There is no good reason for this to be arch specific.
Presumably the compatible string is unique and just as easily grepped
for in the kernel source as the machine_desc name is. Adding a
filename string here seems like useless bloat to me.

Rob

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/10/30/27