2.4 versus 2.6 patches

   i just realized that the sample excerpts i was posting from the
ppc config files were from the 2.4 source tree, not 2.6, so for most
of the folks on this list, i suspect they'd be more interested in
patches to a 2.6-style Kconfig file, not a 2.4-style config.in file,
correct?

rday

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On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 10:57 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

for most of the folks on this list, i suspect they'd be more
interested in patches to a 2.6-style Kconfig file, not a 2.4-style
config.in file, correct?

Yes. The 2.4 kernel is dead.

There are two classes of people -- those who are shipping 2.4 already or
at least close to doing so, and those who are bringing Linux up on a new
board.

The former are hopefully already past the stage of being confused by
such things in the config files, and the latter should most definitely
be using 2.6.

--
dwmw2


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David Woodhouse [off-list ref] wrote:

On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 10:57 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

quoted

for most of the folks on this list, i suspect they'd be more
interested in patches to a 2.6- style Kconfig file,not a 2.4-style
config.in file, correct?

Yes. The 2.4 kernel is dead.

But 2.4 kernel is still a pet for 8xx,at least.I guess
many embedded Linux development lean to 2.4 kernel for
the moment.For Linux kernel hackers,2.4 kernel was
dead but it is alive for most embedded
developers.Right? :-)

Best regards,

Sam

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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [gb2312] Song Sam wrote:

But 2.4 kernel is still a pet for 8xx,at least.I guess
many embedded Linux development lean to 2.4 kernel for
the moment.For Linux kernel hackers,2.4 kernel was
dead but it is alive for most embedded
developers.Right? :-)

I cannot speak for 'most embedded developers.'; only those with clue.

I would not consider deploying anything new on 2.4 today; it's just
not a viable, maintainable platform in my opinion.

--
dwmw2

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On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 12:13:17AM -0400, David Woodhouse wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [gb2312] Song Sam wrote:

quoted

But 2.4 kernel is still a pet for 8xx,at least.I guess
many embedded Linux development lean to 2.4 kernel for
the moment.For Linux kernel hackers,2.4 kernel was
dead but it is alive for most embedded
developers.Right? :-)

I cannot speak for 'most embedded developers.'; only those with clue.

I find this statement almost offensive, btw.

I would not consider deploying anything new on 2.4 today; it's just
not a viable, maintainable platform in my opinion.

I would not consider deploying anything on 2.6 today. IMHO it's not mature
enough to be used in production environment.

Just my $0.02

Eugene

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--- Eugene Surovegin <ebs@ebshome.net> wrote��

On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 12:13:17AM -0400, David
Woodhouse wrote:

quoted

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [gb2312] Song Sam wrote:

quoted

But 2.4 kernel is still a pet for 8xx,at least. I guess many
embedded Linux development lean to 2.4 kernel for the moment.For
Linux kernel hackers,2.4 kernel was dead but it is alive for most
embedded developers.Right? :-)

I cannot speak for 'most embedded developers.'; only those with
clue.

Sorry,I got you wrong.I was a little too sensitive to
see 2.4 with "dead".Just gave my opinion on 2.4 kernel
on embedded development.

quoted

I would not consider deploying anything new on 2.4 today; it's just
not a viable, maintainable platform in my opinion.

It was really a puzzle for me why 2.4 is NOT a viable,
maintainable platform but it is used more than 2.6.x
in many embedded development.Also why to see 2.4 dying
without leaving the official maintaining work to some
volunteers? Any special reason?

I would not consider deploying anything on 2.6 today. IMHO it's not
mature enough to be used in production environment.

I do agree with the view.I guess it is most embedded
developers's opinion.

Thanks for all attention.

Sam

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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [gb2312] Song Sam wrote:

Sorry,I got you wrong.I was a little too sensitive to
see 2.4 with "dead".Just gave my opinion on 2.4 kernel
on embedded development.

Deployment if you're already almost ready to ship is sane enough, I
suppose -- but to actually put more effort into 2.4 wouldn't make much
sense.

It was really a puzzle for me why 2.4 is NOT a viable,
maintainable platform but it is used more than 2.6.x
in many embedded development.Also why to see 2.4 dying
without leaving the official maintaining work to some
volunteers? Any special reason?

Because nobody's really that interested in it. For what it's worth, I've
abandoned all pretence of continuing to support 2.4 in the MTD/JFFS2 CVS
tree. I won't object too hard if someone else wants to fix it up, _if_
that doesn't uglify the 2.6 code.

If 2.4 works already for you, by all means use it -- but if you're doing
any new development, or you _really_ want people to care when you find
bugs, it really ought to be 2.6.

quoted

I would not consider deploying anything on 2.6
today. IMHO it's not mature
enough to be used in production environment.

I do agree with the view.I guess it is most embedded
developers's opinion.

Out of interest, how many platforms are you using 2.6 on and how does
your experience with these platforms support your stated view?

--
dwmw2

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If 2.4 works already for you, by all means use it -- but if you're doing
any new development, or you _really_ want people to care when you find
bugs, it really ought to be 2.6.

Well, this is a surprise to me.  Does the stock 2.6 even compile on 8xx yet,
or are you talking about 8xxx and/or IBM?

Mark Chambers


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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Mark Chambers wrote:

quoted

If 2.4 works already for you, by all means use it -- but if you're
doing any new development, or you _really_ want people to care when
you find bugs, it really ought to be 2.6.

Well, this is a surprise to me.  Does the stock 2.6 even compile on
8xx yet, or are you talking about 8xxx and/or IBM?

well, the linuxppc-2.5 bk pull from bkbits.net compiles and boots on
our 8xx board.  although i'm still working on relocating SMC1 to allow
ethernet on SCC3.  but other than that, sure, it builds and boots.

rday

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On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 10:27:52AM -0400, David Woodhouse wrote:

Because nobody's really that interested in it. For what it's worth, I've
abandoned all pretence of continuing to support 2.4 in the MTD/JFFS2 CVS
tree.

This is quite sad, but not all maintainers do the same. IIRC networking fixes
are still backported to 2.4.

Hopefully, I can maintain this stuff myself and backport fixes (what I already
did for some MTD stuff, btw).

quoted

quoted

I would not consider deploying anything on 2.6
today. IMHO it's not mature
enough to be used in production environment.

I do agree with the view.I guess it is most embedded
developers's opinion.

Out of interest, how many platforms are you using 2.6 on and how does
your experience with these platforms support your stated view?

How the number of platforms is relevant for this discussion? It should work on
one I use, it's quite academic for me if it works fine on another. Could you
point me to _any_ distribution which is shipping_2.6 PPC 4xx based kernel with
working preemption? Last time I tried this on Ebony it wasn't quite stable.

A little history, IMO we get something we can call "production quality" 2.4
PPC 4xx only in the end of 2003. It took me almost 1.5 years to get 2.4 stable
on platforms I use (fixing some nasty bugs on the way, even MTD ones :P). After
that I'm quite reluctant to switch to 2.6 right now, just because some
maintainers lost interest in 2.4.

--
Eugene

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On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 18:30, Eugene Surovegin wrote:

On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 10:27:52AM -0400, David Woodhouse wrote:

quoted

Because nobody's really that interested in it. For what it's worth, I've
abandoned all pretence of continuing to support 2.4 in the MTD/JFFS2 CVS
tree.

This is quite sad, but not all maintainers do the same. IIRC networking fixes
are still backported to 2.4.

Maybe not all maintainers suffer from continous lack of collaboration
and community feedback.

Hopefully, I can maintain this stuff myself and backport fixes (what I already
did for some MTD stuff, btw).

Cool (where are the patches, btw ???).

We would certainly be happy to keep a 2.4 branch of MTD alive if there
would be any noticable support available instead of whinging about the
brokenness of the MTD CVS.

But we certainly do not get any further, when people have patches around
and complain why we have not included them into MTD CVS by magic
awareness of the solution.

tglx


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On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 01:17:52AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

quoted

Hopefully, I can maintain this stuff myself and backport fixes (what I already
did for some MTD stuff, btw).

Cool (where are the patches, btw ???).

All stuff I backported into my 2.4.21 tree _are_ from MTD CVS (e.g. write buffer
support for AMD flashes). When I found bugs in MTD layer, I submit patches
through usual channels.

We would certainly be happy to keep a 2.4 branch of MTD alive if there
would be any noticable support available instead of whinging about the
brokenness of the MTD CVS.

Could you point to any e-mail where I was whining about brokenness of MTD CVS?
If not, what was the purpose of your statement?

This is the exact attitude which will not help you to get "any noticeable
support".

But we certainly do not get any further, when people have patches around
and complain why we have not included them into MTD CVS by magic
awareness of the solution.

What is your point? Do you accuse me of not contributing back patches? I always
do this.

You missed the point of this discussion. We wasn't talking about some
random patches floating around. We were talking about stuff which _is_ in 2.6
but not 2.4. Also, we were talking about how mature is 2.6 for production
environment and how "dead" is 2.4

Of course, it's up to maintainer to decide what to backport or not, _nobody_
here asks you or David or anybody else to backport anything.

This is what I _love_ about OSS - I don't depend on any vendor/person/whoever.

Eugene.


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On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 01:49, Eugene Surovegin wrote:

On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 01:17:52AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

quoted

quoted

Hopefully, I can maintain this stuff myself and backport fixes (what I already
did for some MTD stuff, btw).

Cool (where are the patches, btw ???).

All stuff I backported into my 2.4.21 tree _are_ from MTD CVS (e.g. write buffer
support for AMD flashes). When I found bugs in MTD layer, I submit patches
through usual channels.

I would suspect, that MTD would be an usual channel for stuff concerning
MTD. And maybe I'm missing the point again, but your last posting to MTD
is dated from Jan 2003, if "ebshome" || "eugene" are sufficient enough
search strings.

quoted

We would certainly be happy to keep a 2.4 branch of MTD alive if there
would be any noticable support available instead of whinging about the
brokenness of the MTD CVS.

Could you point to any e-mail where I was whining about brokenness of MTD CVS?
If not, what was the purpose of your statement?

References:  [off-list ref]
[off-list ref]

Cite: "This is quite sad, but not all maintainers do the same. IIRC
networking fixes are still backported to 2.4. <snip> Hopefully, I can
maintain this stuff myself and backport fixes (what I already did for
some MTD stuff, btw)."

You are accusing David of being not as 2.4 friendly as other maintainers
seem to be in your opinion.

This is the exact attitude which will not help you to get "any noticeable
support".

You're attitude is exactly what I'm talking of and why I choose this
tone:
"(what I already did for some MTD stuff, btw)."

quoted

But we certainly do not get any further, when people have patches around
and complain why we have not included them into MTD CVS by magic
awareness of the solution.

What is your point? Do you accuse me of not contributing back patches? I always
do this.

I'm just asking where the patches go to. To the usual places ? See
above.

You missed the point of this discussion. We wasn't talking about some
random patches floating around. We were talking about stuff which _is_ in 2.6
but not 2.4. Also, we were talking about how mature is 2.6 for production
environment and how "dead" is 2.4

I'm well aware of what you were talking in foreground, but I'm also able
to read the implicit things between the lines.

Quite in contrary: Random patches floating around which do not make
their way to the place where they should go, _ARE_ part of the problem.

tglx


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David Woodhouse [off-list ref] wrote��

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [gb2312] Song Sam wrote:

quoted

It was really a puzzle for me why 2.4 is NOT a viable,maintainable
platform but it is used more than 2.6.x in many embedded
development.Also why to see 2.4 dying without leaving the official
maintaining work to some volunteers? Any special reason?

Because nobody's really that interested in it.

Here nobody perhaps means "no official
maintainers",those top level kernel hackers.

If 2.4 works already for you, by all means use it -- but if you're
doing any new development, or you _really_ want people to care when
you find bugs, it really ought to be 2.6.

Thanks for this guideness.I am also interested in
2.6.x development on embedded application.But for the
sake of stable and useable,I perfer to 2.4.x for the
moment.Anyway,2.4 is a sign of mature for Linux.
Now I know what's the real reason of End Development
for official 2_4_devel.

Out of interest, how many platforms are you using 2.6 on and how does
your experience with these platforms support your stated view?

Good point.I should take back my assumption to say
"most" from now on.
For your insterest,just 2 platforms was used by me.One
is RPXlite DW,which could run on 2.4.x and 2.6.7 with
RAMDISK root file system.Another it's modified
board,which could only run with 2.4.x by now.

Thanks a lot for your attention on this point.

Sam

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On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 02:25 +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

quoted

You missed the point of this discussion. We wasn't talking about some
random patches floating around. We were talking about stuff which _is_ in 2.6
but not 2.4. Also, we were talking about how mature is 2.6 for production
environment and how "dead" is 2.4

I'm well aware of what you were talking in foreground, but I'm also able
to read the implicit things between the lines.

Quite in contrary: Random patches floating around which do not make
their way to the place where they should go, _ARE_ part of the problem.

In the case of patches backporting 2.6 features into 2.4, the 'place
where they should go' is /dev/null. It's only pure bug fixes which
should be merged.

We already have a branch in CVS for the 2.4 version of JFFS2, and bugs
are independently fixed there. I've seen no need to do likewise for the
MTD code yet, because most people patching that have been doing so in
order to backport new features rather than to fix bugs.

I don't intend to put new features into 2.4. Where 'new' means developed
after the time I last gave Marcelo an update; not after today. If you
want stuff developed in the last few years (like JFFS2 which mounts in a
relatively sane amount of time) then you should be using 2.6.

--
dwmw2


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On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 09:48:47PM +0800, Song Sam wrote:

I think what David means is that v2.6 is the new platform
where all development effort is being done. Most of its core
code, in general, is much cleaner than v2.4.

I disagree with him when he says "v2.4 is dead" (I coudlnt otherwise :)),
because its still maintained and will be for years. And its still in
use by a lot of folks.

But his point is that new development efforts should be based on the
new, shiny, improved v2.6 kernel, since that is where all development
is focused at. And as time passes, v2.4 will get more and more
obsolete.

Unfortunately for 8xx users, as noted by other people on this thread,
v2.6 is not yet 100% (wish it was, I'm myself trying to get our boards
to boot v2.6).

There are some TLB related issue which needs fixing, Panto got a workaround
which works for him (while not being fully optimal). Dan Malek and Panto, at
least, know exactly what still needs work (unlike me).

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Marcelo Tosatti [off-list ref] wrote��

I think what David means is that v2.6 is the new platform where all
development effort is being done. Most of its core code, in general,
is much cleaner than v2.4.

Thanks for your insight on 2.6 nice characters.

I disagree with him when he says "v2.4 is dead" (I coudlnt otherwise
:)), because its still maintained and will be for years. And its still
in use by a lot of folks.

Yeah,I am so happy to see v2.4 is still supported
officially.2.4.27 was released a couple of days ago.So
mother tree is alive but ppc child tree was dead.
I wonder if I have a patch vs 2.4 branch on ppc,could
I send to Marcelo Tosatti directly?

But his point is that new development efforts should be based on the
new, shiny, improved v2.6 kernel, since that is where all development
is focused at. And as time passes, v2.4 will get more and more
obsolete.

I am looking forward to seeing the day coming. :-)

Unfortunately for 8xx users, as noted by other people on this thread,
v2.6 is not yet 100% (wish it was, I'm myself trying to get our boards
to boot v2.6).

Could you make it? I once booted v2.6 on RPXlite DW
via ramdisk root file system but failed via NFS.

Best regards,

Sam

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On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 01:58:26PM +0800, Song Sam wrote:

Marcelo Tosatti [off-list ref] wrote??

quoted

I think what David means is that v2.6 is the new
platform where all development effort is being done.
Most of its core code, in general, is much cleaner
than v2.4.

Thanks for your insight on 2.6 nice characters.

quoted

I disagree with him when he says "v2.4 is dead" (I
coudlnt otherwise :)),
because its still maintained and will be for years.
And its still in use by a lot of folks.

Yeah,I am so happy to see v2.4 is still supported
officially.2.4.27 was released a couple of days ago.So
mother tree is alive but ppc child tree was dead.
I wonder if I have a patch vs 2.4 branch on ppc,could
I send to Marcelo Tosatti directly?

quoted

But his point is that new development efforts should
be based on the new, shiny, improved v2.6 kernel,
since that is where all development
is focused at. And as time passes, v2.4 will get
more and more obsolete.

I am looking forward to seeing the day coming. :-)

Me too :)

quoted

Unfortunately for 8xx users, as noted by other
people on this thread,
v2.6 is not yet 100% (wish it was, I'm myself trying
to get our boards
to boot v2.6).

Could you make it? I once booted v2.6 on RPXlite DW
via ramdisk root file system but failed via NFS.

There was an oops at startup, but it reached
"VFS: Mounting root" point.

It took me almost two weeks to get there.

Note our board has quite some specific needs which are not
supported in mainline.

I plan to send a CONFIG_PRxK (new sub-sub-architecture)
to PPC maintainers as soon as I have it clean (its
years work of Cyclades programmers work on top of
MontaVista work) to support it.

Other people seem to get it to boot fully (reported here on
the list), but there's still needs work to be done on
TLB flushing code (Paul & others discussed this in-depth
on the list a month ago or so).


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