Re: [PATCH RFC v2 0/4] ARM: oxnas support removal

Rob Herring <[email protected]> Mon, 3 Apr 2023 13:36:43 -0500
Newsgroups io.groups.linux-oxnas,dev.linux.lists.soc,org.infradead.lists.linux-arm-kernel,org.kernel.vger.linux-devicetree,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Mon, Apr 03, 2023 at 09:42:17AM +0200, 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 ?

Nah, just remove them. Like the code, we can always bring them back if 
needed.

Rob