On 03/02/2011 02:39 PM, Saravana Kannan wrote:

On 03/01/2011 05:27 PM, Ryan Mallon wrote:

quoted

On 03/02/2011 02:19 PM, Saravana Kannan wrote:

quoted

On 03/01/2011 05:13 PM, Andrei Warkentin wrote:

quoted

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 10:51 PM, Saravana Kannan
[off-list ref]   wrote:

<snip>

quoted

quoted

What would an "arch" file mean? The name of the soc platform?

The arch file would pretty much be the "xxxx" from arch/arm/mach-xxxx or
similar paths. If that info is already available elsewhere, then that
file is not needed. I proposed using the arch since that will remove the
need to maintain some database of unique/reserved names/numbers for each
implementation of socinfo (like the machinetypes list we have).

/proc/cpuinfo already tells you what the CPU is, which gives more
information than just the architecture name.

Why is the arch information even required by userspace?

The socinfo exported by each soc is different. If userspace is trying to
make decisions based on socinfo, it will need to know what type of soc
(really what type of socinfo implementation) it is before trying to
interpret the rest of the socinfo files. Keep in mind that cpuinfo is
different from socinfo -- the cpu is just a small part of a soc.

I understand that having a socinfo file for obtaining information about
a particular SoC would be useful. A similar discussion came up a few
years ago when we talked about having a socinfo file for exposing the
ep93xx Maverick crunch id, but nothing ever came out of it.

What I don't understand is why you want the 'arch' file (ie the
mach-xxxx) name. /proc/cpuinfo already gives you more information than
an 'arch' file would. I also can't think of a particularly good
situation why userspace would need to know at runtime what the
architecture is.

Have a socinfo file to expose implementation details of the particular
SoC I am fine with (assuming those details are useful to userspace),
having an 'arch' file to expose the architecture I am against.

~Ryan

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