Future of Octeon MIPS hardware support

The main Ethernet driver for all Octeon MIPS SoCs has been disabled
upstream in Linux 5.5, and will be removed in 5.6.  The driver has been
in "staging" (i.e. it didn't meet the usual standards for kernel code)
ever since it was added in 2009.  It recently stopped building, and
didn't have a regular maintainer who could fix it.  (There is a
separate Ethernet driver for the management port, which seems to be
still maintained.)

The USB host driver for Octeon CN3xxx and CN5xxx SoCs will also be
removed for similar reasons.

* DSA: The removal of the Ethernet driver will affect the EdgeRouter
Pro used for the Debian mips porterbox and some buildds.  These do not
seem to have any expansion slots useful for alternate network
interfaces, so they will likely need to be replaced before buster EOL.

* MIPS porters: Given that these SoCs are designed primarily for
networking and we will no longer support the on-board network
interfaces, does it make sense to continue building kernel packages for
them?

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
No political challenge can be met by shopping. - George Monbiot

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