Old platforms: bring out your dead

[Song Bao Hua (Barry Song)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arnd Bergmann [mailto:arnd at kernel.org]
> Sent: Saturday, January 9, 2021 11:55 AM
> To: Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel at lists.infradead.org>; Linux Kernel Mailing
> List <linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org>
> Cc: Krzysztof Adamski <krzysztof.adamski at nokia.com>; Oleksij Rempel
> <o.rempel at pengutronix.de>; Baruch Siach <baruch at tkos.co.il>; Russell King -
> ARM Linux <linux at armlinux.org.uk>; Daniel Tang <dt.tangr at gmail.com>; Uwe
> Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig at pengutronix.de>; Jamie Iles
> <jamie at jamieiles.com>; Song Bao Hua (Barry Song) <song.bao.hua at hisilicon.com>;
> Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar at linaro.org>; Linus Walleij
> <linus.walleij at linaro.org>; Jonas Jensen <jonas.jensen at gmail.com>; Marc
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> <tsbogend at alpha.franken.de>
> Subject: Old platforms: bring out your dead
> 
> After v5.10 was officially declared an LTS kernel, I had a look around
> the Arm platforms that look like they have not seen any patches from
> their maintainers or users that are actually running the hardware for
> at least five years (2015 or earlier). I made some statistics and lists
> for my lwn.net article last year [1], so I'd thought I'd share a summary
> here for discussion about what we should remove. As I found three
> years ago when I removed several CPU architectures, it makes sense
> to do this in bulk, to simplify a scripted search for device drivers, header
> files and Kconfig options that become unused in the process.
> 
> 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:
> 
> * asm9260 -- added in 2014, no notable changes after 2015
> * axxia -- added in 2014, no notable changes after 2015
> * bcm/kona -- added in 2013, no notable changes after 2014
> * digicolor -- added in 2014, no notable changes after 2015
> * dove -- added in 2009, obsoleted by mach-mvebu in 2015
> * efm32 -- added in 2011, first Cortex-M, no notable changes after 2013
> * nspire -- added in 2013, no notable changes after 2015
> * picoxcell -- added in 2011, already queued for removal
> * prima2 -- added in 20111, no notable changes since 2015

Hi Arnd,
I got confirmation from Qualcomm guys that there is no plan
to maintain prima2 in mainline any more.
Please feel free to remove the code. If you need my help,
Please let me know.

> * spear -- added in 2010, no notable changes since 2015
> * tango -- added in 2015, sporadic changes until 2017, but abandoned
> * u300 -- added in 2009, no notable changes since 2013
> * vt8500 -- added in 2010, no notable changes since 2014
> * zx --added in 2015 for both 32, 2017 for 64 bit, no notable changes
> 

Thanks
Barry