[Ksummit-2013-discuss] ARM topic: Is DT on ARM the solution, or is there something better?

[Richard Cochran]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 01:55:24PM -0400, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2013, Richard Cochran wrote:
> > I still don't understand why someone (linario?) can't host an
> > arm-dt-devel tree that allows the freedom to change bindings and
> > features the best source for supporting the latest ARM SoCs. I don't
> > buy the argument that only Linus' tree gets enough testing. If another
> > tree really is the best ARM tree, then it will get plenty of attention
> > and testing.
> 
> So you're basically saying that we should split the development effort 
> across multiple trees instead of encouraging people to converge on the 
> same tree?  This is completely contrary to all the efforts we've been 
> deploying to encourage people to submit their code upstream.

No, just a single tree, please.
 
> ii> As an end user, I don't mind waiting for a feature if that means
> > stability and QA. If I get impatient, still I always have the choice
> > to take a development version. But I do not want to be forced to take
> > unfinished work in a released kernel.
> 
> If as an end user you want full QA, you should go with a distro kernel.

No, no, NO! I won't ship a distro kernel because they screw things
up (at least, in my experience). I will ship a 3.x.y stable kernel,
though.
 
> We're talking about the upstream kernel here, and given the current 
> development and release rate we hardly can guarantee you that it'll be 
> free of unfinished work (as long as it doesn't regress existing 
> features).

I read a quote from a Big Cheese saying how the Linux kernel is a
stable release cycle. There are bugs, to be sure, but, in my
experience, each release is pretty stable on x86 (but not on arm).

Thanks,
Richard