[PATCH v5 0/4] ARM: ep93xx: ts72xx: Add support for BK3 board

Hi Linus,

On Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 9:52 AM, Lukasz Majewski [off-list ref]
wrote:

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On Wed Dec 13 08:34:22 2017 Linus Walleij
[off-list ref] wrote:  

quoted

On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 12:36 AM, Lukasz Majewski [off-list ref]
wrote: Out of curiosity: Liebherr is obviously doing heavy-duty
industrial control systems. Likewise Hartley is doing similar
business over at Vision Engravings.

Is the situation such that there is a whole bunch of industrial
systems out there, in active use and needing future upgrades,
that use the EP93xx?  

That's definitely the case. I'm as well aware of several thousands
of industrial devices which are expected to run 24/7 for the next 5
years at least. And they are updated from time to time.  

I can agree with this statement.  

OK I'm coloring this platform with a highlight for ARM32 maintenance.

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Arnd has been nudging me to do DT conversion for EP93xx
so if there are many active industrial users of these
I should prioritize it, because these things have 20+ years
support cycles.  

I'm not sure how important or necessary at all is to change
anything in these legacy platforms.  

+1  

That is an understandable conservative stance.

There is a fine line between "it works, don't touch it" and
"modernize the ARM32 ecosystem".

There may be a more pragmatic reason. If those boards are deployed
(widely) in the industry - there may be a problem with re-validation of
the SW.

There is a point where supporting old board files will stand in
the way and cost a lot in maintenance (like moving drivers our
of arch/arm, or modernizing misc subsystems). Then moving the
platform over to device tree should be preferred.

With my limited experience - those platforms have more similarities to
x86. Multiplatform may be the goal here....

quoted

I'm using OE to build toolchain (SDK). I can confirm that gcc 7.2
works with it.

And yes, armv4 support shall be preserved in GCC ....  

I should have be more peculiar - this is armv4t (arm920t)

Yes that is the same toochain I use.

Yours,
Linus Walleij

Best regards,

Lukasz Majewski

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