Dear Albert ARIBAUD, In message <4db72d4a.5070...@aribaud.net> you wrote: > > Well, as you stated yourself recently, why would/should we maintain > mach-types that are apparently not going to be used? Do machine types > have other uses than for Linux? No code in U-Boot should worry about the > mach-id if not for Linux.
Well, in principle you are of course right. But I am well aware that there is a ton of Linux BSPs out there which have never been pushed upstream into mainline by their respective creators for some reason or another. Also I see a chance that other uses of the mach-ids might exist - the Linux ARM folks have, fro a very long time, always explained what a clever idea this is to describe hardware features. I hesitate to cut off all these exitisting or even potential users lightly, when there is a solution that works reasonably well for them and, at the same time, brings only minimal maintenance burdon for us. > Also, if we still decide to maintain our own list of mach-types, we will > need some rule to decide when to remove mach-types from this special > list eventually. Otherwise, it'll become asymptotically identical to the > full lits that is also availabe, and then, what would be the point of > maintaining our own? That rule can be simple: we will only allow to add the now existing (in U-Boot mainline code) mach-ids, so this list should not grow further after the initial creation. OK, ther eis a slight chance that any newly added boards (to U-Boot) will get removed from the Linux master file later, but I consider this a small risk - especially as I expect to see more and ore device-tree based ARM ports quickly, so the whole mach-id thing becomes less and less of a pain. > So IMO, if we have mach-types in U-Boot for supporting Linux, then we > should keep using a (reasonably) up-to-date Linux machine ID list just > like we do now -- mach-types that disappear from the list mean Linux > support has become useless for that machine in U-Boot. And if we have > our own mach-type policy, different from "has linux support", then we > need to specify what this policy is and how it is implemented. I think we should be gentle to users of existing code and avoid breaking it. From now on, we could establish a policy that a mach-id can only be referenced when and as long mainline Linux support for this board exists. I'm open for suggestions. Best regards, Wolfgang Denk -- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: w...@denx.de There is a time in the tides of men, Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success. On the other hand, don't count on it. - T. K. Lawson _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
