I have some concern to call tiny the 8/32 boards.
While I understand the 4MB flash devices as phased out the 8/32 are
still very popular and probably most of the devices still running in
many and many places and they are not really tiny as of today. Some
newer low priced are coming with 8/64, but the point is that OpenWrt has
been the responsible for many devices to keep going for years with
stability and this no doubt will happen with 8/32 for a while.
Calling tiny means only 8MB flash or both 8MB flash and 32MB ram ? I may
see a point to call the 8MB devices maybe, but not 32MB ram ones.
Fernando
On 19/09/2020 19:21, Adrian Schmutzler wrote:
Indeed "LOW_MEMORY_FOOTPRINT" seems only to affedt 3 general options
and one option of OpenSSL.
So it might be an option to :
* set LOW_MEM for 8/32 MB devies
* set LOW_MEM and SMALL_FLASH for 4/32 MB devices
* check the CONFIG-options for usefull defaults So the tiny aubtarget can be
defined as "boards with 32MB or less of RAM; some boards also with only
4MB of flash". This definition would essentially match the "4/32 warning" [1].
Actually, this narrows down to a question that struck me several times already:
Now, that 4 MB flash devices are not "supported" anymore, how should we deal with the
"tiny" subtargets:
1. We keep the tiny subtargets configured for low flash, so people still trying
to build 4 MB flash devices still can use this. (This will also benefit a few
devices with kernel size restrictions; however, this is a much smaller set than
in earlier times; most of these devices have dual-stage bootloaders now or died
anyway).
2. We convert the tiny targets to low-memory targets; this will improve the
situation for a few devices (like you mentioned), but will make it much harder
to still build the 4M flash devices without major changes. Apart from ath79, I
don't know whether this would make sense for other targets like the old
subtargets on ramips. This poses the risk of having some targets low-mem and
some small-flash, which I'd like to avoid. Additionally, we will have to change
back from low-mem to small-flash again when we start to hit limits with the 8M
devices.
3. Though not intended by this conversation, the third option is obviously to just ignore
all 4M or 32M devices from now on (as actually announced by the 4/32 warning), and design
the tiny targets based on the requirements of the 8M devices that will start to become a
"problem" soon (either due to kernel size restrictions or because of small
rootfs). Actually, we already went into this direction by using wpad-basic-wolfssl on
tiny targets as well.
Best
Adrian
[1] - https://openwrt.org/supported_devices/432_warning
Sven
[0] https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/2032
[1]
https://github.com/freifunk-
gluon/gluon/commit/7e8af99cf504ca1dc389f28
2a0c9
4f4a911571be
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