On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Bryan Wu bryan.wu@canonical.com wrote:
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Eric Miao eric.miao@linaro.org wrote:
Just FYI - lengthy but very interesting read, Linus was really good at wording, enjoy heh :-)
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/3/17/283
So maybe it's just a right time to talk about using linaro ARM kernel tree as a fork for quick merge of the ever expanding SoC and board support, and using it more as a productive kernel for downstream. And in the mean time, improve the mainline kernel into such a good shape that with less crappy code we could support more platforms?
Just a bit thought on that possibility.
Yeah, I've discussed with Eric 2 days ago after I was shocked by this email flame about our ARM community. Generally, I do think it's a good time for our Linaro guys to consider necessary actions, since Linaro is a neutral place for all ARM Linux related parties and we are trying to make upstream kernel better and benefit for every ARM Linux players.
Yes, it's good time for Linaro to take the responsibility to contribute and demonstrate more for the ARM community.
So a) firstly, I suggest we need discuss widely why Linus blamed us (the problem we are facing here). I think if we followed the email thread we can buy the conclusion (if I'm wrong, please correct me): ARM kernel need some kind of platform layer (not ARM core layer ARMv7/ARMv6) abstraction or unification. And our goal is make our SoC sub arch code more cleaner and more containable, or support single binary kernel for ARM machines (magic to me). For deeper investigation, I think Nico pointed out some abstraction areas such as GPIO, irq_chip, PWM (from Uwe), other fundamental areas and etc. We definitely need a working item list for this. Maybe we will realize this working list is too large, then we might go back to talk about a fork or a mach-nocrap (from Arnd).
It's correct. ARM kernel need some abstraction from soc level, but it's not that easy. Each SOC vendor did each design differently by each other. There is lack of common interface between each SOC vendor. There is no common rule for each SOC vendor to play with. And even worse is that each SOC will have each ugly bug and need software to work around it. What Linaro can do now is that Linaro can consolidate the current ARM kernel and make it more abstraction and cleaner, but what about it in the feature when more SOC come out?
[...]
Just some basic thought, hope we can come our some real solutions and make Linus just merge without any complains, -:))
Thanks,
Bryan Wu bryan.wu@canonical.com Kernel Developer +86.138-1617-6545 Mobile Ubuntu Kernel Team Canonical Ltd. www.canonical.com Ubuntu - Linux for human beings | www.ubuntu.com
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