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    SubjectRe: [PATCH RFC 00/20] ARM: oxnas support removal
    On 31/03/2023 15:42, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
    > On Fri, Mar 31, 2023, at 10:34, 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 ?
    >>
    >> It has been a fun time adding support for this architecture, but it's time
    >> to get over!
    >>
    >> Patch 2 obviously depends on [1].
    >>
    >> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230327121317.4081816-1-arnd@kernel.org/
    >>
    >> Signed-off-by: Neil Armstrong <neil.armstrong@linaro.org>
    >
    > Thanks a lot for going through this and preparing the patches!
    >
    > I've discussed this with Daniel Golle on the OpenWRT channel as well,
    > and he indicated that the timing is probably fine here, as there are
    > already close to zero downloads for oxnas builds, and the 6.1 kernel
    > will only be part of a release in 2024.
    >
    > For the dependency on my other patch, I'd suggest you instead
    > remove the SMP files here as well, which means we can merge either
    > part independently based on just 6.3-rc. I can do that change
    > myself by picking up patches 1-4 of your RFC series, or maybe you
    > can send resend them after rebase to 6.3-rc1.

    Ack I'll send patches 1-4 rebased on v6.3-rc1 with the acks
    and sent a PR next week.

    >
    > For the driver removals, I think we can merge those at the same
    > time as the platform removal since there are no shared header files
    > that would cause build time regressions and there are no runtime
    > regressions other than breaking the platform itself. Maybe
    > just send the driver removal separately to the subsystem
    > maintainers with my
    >
    > Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>

    Thanks, I'll submit those individually once the first patches are merged.

    Neil

    >
    > Arnd

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