[PATCH 21/21] ARM: Kirkwood: Remove DT support

On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 16:19 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

On Thursday 20 February 2014 14:21:10 Ian Campbell wrote:

quoted

On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 14:53 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

quoted

On Thursday 20 February 2014 12:51:04 Ian Campbell wrote:
* ixp4xx is too different from the others and I don't think it's
  possible to turn it over to multiplatform.
* I see a iop32x_defconfig in svn that you didn't mention here,
  but it's basically the same problem as ixp4xx.

This is only in Wheezy and not in trunk (which will become Jessie). AIUI
support for these has been dropped for the next version of Debian so
Wheezy is the last one and we don't need to worry about upgrade for
these.

Ok, I see.

quoted

TBH I'm not sure that ixp4xx isn't in the same boat, I suppose we'll
see.

For all I know, the only interesting ixp4xx platforms are the consumer
products listed on http://www.nslu2-linux.org/, the other ones you support
are development boards that tend to exist only in very small quantities.

The main limitation would be the amount of installed RAM, which is
either 32MB or 64MB depending on the machine for these. Running a
modern Debian with these constraints is probably possible but
doesn't sound like fun. ;-)

Our most pressing constraint has actually been the size of the kernel
partition in flash, which is only ~1.4 MB on some of the iop32x and
ixp4xx machines (and ~1.5 MB on one of the orion5x machines).  We've
modularised as much as possible and turned off some of the features that
are otherwise standard across all Debian architectures.

But I got fed up with trying to make it fit, and no-one else stepped up
to maintain the reduced configurations, so the last time iop32x went
over the limit I removed it.  As Ian hinted, ixp4xx might follow.

Also, the upstream kernel port isn't that well maintained, a lot
the development seems to have happened in OpenWRT and not mainlined,
including a dozen new machines that were already ported in 2009.

Then again, Martin Michlmayr has instructions for running Wheezy
on the 32MB nslu2, and I guess as long as he's interested in the
hardware, new versions of Debian will keep running on it.

[...]

Martin is not currently active in Debian kernel maintenance.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson
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