[PATCH RFC 00/20] ARM: oxnas support removal

[Neil Armstrong]

Hi Daniel,

On 31/03/2023 15:50, Daniel Golle wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 03:42:15PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 31, 2023, at 10:34, Neil Armstrong wrote:
>>> With [1] removing MPCore SMP support, this makes the OX820 barely usable,
>>> associated with a clear lack of maintainance, development and migration to
>>> dt-schema it's clear that Linux support for OX810 and OX820 should be removed.
>>>
>>> In addition, the OX810 hasn't been booted for years and isn't even present
>>> in an ARM config file.
>>>
>>> For the OX820, lack of USB and SATA support makes the platform not usable
>>> in the current Linux support and relies on off-tree drivers hacked from the
>>> vendor (defunct for years) sources.
>>>
>>> The last users are in the OpenWRT distribution, and today's removal means
>>> support will still be in stable 6.1 LTS kernel until end of 2026.
>>>
>>> If someone wants to take over the development even with lack of SMP, I'll
>>> be happy to hand off maintainance.
>>>
>>> The plan is to apply the first 4 patches first, then the drivers
>>> followed by bindings. Finally the MAINTAINANCE entry can be removed.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure about the process of bindings removal, but perhaps the bindings
>>> should be marked as deprecated first then removed later on ?
>>>
>>> It has been a fun time adding support for this architecture, but it's time
>>> to get over!
>>>
>>> Patch 2 obviously depends on [1].
>>>
>>> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230327121317.4081816-1-arnd@kernel.org/
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Neil Armstrong <neil.armstrong at linaro.org>
>>
>> Thanks a lot for going through this and preparing the patches!
>>
>> I've discussed this with Daniel Golle on the OpenWRT channel as well,
>> and he indicated that the timing is probably fine here, as there are
>> already close to zero downloads for oxnas builds, and the 6.1 kernel
>> will only be part of a release in 2024.
>>
>> For the dependency on my other patch, I'd suggest you instead
>> remove the SMP files here as well, which means we can merge either
>> part independently based on just 6.3-rc. I can do that change
>> myself by picking up patches 1-4 of your RFC series, or maybe you
>> can send resend them after rebase to 6.3-rc1.
>>
>> For the driver removals, I think we can merge those at the same
>> time as the platform removal since there are no shared header files
>> that would cause build time regressions and there are no runtime
>> regressions other than breaking the platform itself. Maybe
>> just send the driver removal separately to the subsystem
>> maintainers with my
>>
>> Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de>
> 
> Sounds reasonable, so also
> 
> Acked-by: Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>
> 
> (but I am a bit sad about it anyway. without SMP it doesn't make sense
> to keep ox820 though)

Same !

I would have loved to see the full support mainline, but the platform is
old and apart you nobody were interested in working on this.

Thanks a lot for you work keeping Oxnas support alive!
Neil