Old platforms: bring out your dead

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 9:49 AM Alexander Sverdlin
<alexander.sverdlin at nokia.com> wrote:
> On 08/01/2021 23:55, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > This is probably a mix of platforms that are completely unused and
> > those that just work, but I have no good way of knowing which one
> > it is. Without hearing back about these, I'd propose removing all of
> > these:
>
> [...]
>
> > * axxia -- added in 2014, no notable changes after 2015
>
> This one is still widely used there is a chance you are using it too when
> traveling in Asia or USA :)

I know this one has a large installed base, and that Intel were at
least working on it for a while after upstream contributions stopped.

However, my impression was that the port was never completed
upstream before the acquisition, and that the new owners had no
interest in working with us. In particular, none of the later Axxia
SoCs (ppc32/axe3500, arm64/axm5600, arm64/axc6700) ever got
submitted for inclusion as far as I can tell.

The latest public source code I found is at https://github.com/axxia/,
but this is a heavily patched linux-4.9, see
https://github.com/axxia/axxia_yocto_linux_4.9/commits/fa03c456641

My interpretation of this was that whoever is using Axxia chips
is no longer interested in upgrading to newer kernels or using
anything remotely resembling the code we have uptream.

> I can take the official maintainership, if there is no existing one currently,
> or you can count on me to test the patches.

That would be great, thanks for the offer.

         Arnd