Over the past ten years, new machine support was based on device tree,
and an initial set of about 400 boards using ATAGS with boardfile
for booting were grandfathered in, with about half of them either
removed or converted to DT over time.
Based on the recent mailing list discussion I started, I have now
turned the findings into a set of patches that marks most board files as
'depends on UNUSED_BOARD_FILES', leaving only 38 of the 196 boards.
For the boards that are marked as unused, there are two final chances
for potential users: The removal is scheduled to take place after the
longterm stable kernel at the end of 2022, so users can stay on that
version for another few years, and if anyone still has one of these
machines and is planning to keep updating kernels beyond that version,
they can speak up now to have their boards taken off the list again.
Waiting for the LTS release also makes sure that there will be at
least one longterm kernel that contains the recent multiplatform
conversion along while still supporting all legacy boards.
The short summary of the current status is:
- The s3c24xx, cns3xxx, iop32x and mv78xx0 platforms have no known
users and will be removed entirely.
- The mmp and davinci platforms have DT support for the important
machines and will become DT-only after this.
- s3c64xx, dove, orion5x, and pxa keep some board files to allow
those to be migrated over to DT more easily, but most board files
are getting removed now. DT support on these platforms is partially
working but requires changes to additional drivers for the other
boards.
- omap1, ep93xx, sa1100, footbridge and rpc have no DT support at
the moment but have some boards with known users. Removing the board
files that nobody uses should make it easier to try a DT conversion
if anyone cares.
There is no explicit timeline what happens with the boards that remain
after this removal, but I expect to revisit this in the future, and
with most boards gone, there will be a good time to do a treewide
review of platform drivers that never gained DT support and have no
remaining in-tree board files.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/CAK8P3a0Z9vGEQbVRBo84bSyPFM-LF+hs5w8ZA51g2Z+NsdtDQA@mail.gmail.com/
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Merge tag 'arm-boardfiles-6.0' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc
Pull ARM boardfile deprecation from Arnd Bergmann:
"Over the past ten years, new machine support was based on device tree,
and an initial set of about 400 boards using ATAGS with boardfile for
booting were grandfathered in, with about half of them either removed
or converted to DT over time.
Based on the recent mailing list discussion I started, I have now
turned the findings into a set of patches that marks most board files
as 'depends on UNUSED_BOARD_FILES', leaving only 38 of the 196 boards.
For the boards that are marked as unused, there are two final chances
for potential users: The removal is scheduled to take place after the
longterm stable kernel at the end of 2022, so users can stay on that
version for another few years, and if anyone still has one of these
machines and is planning to keep updating kernels beyond that version,
they can speak up now to have their boards taken off the list again.
Waiting for the LTS release also makes sure that there will be at
least one longterm kernel that contains the recent multiplatform
conversion along while still supporting all legacy boards.
The short summary of the current status is:
- The s3c24xx, cns3xxx, iop32x and mv78xx0 platforms have no known
users and will be removed entirely.
- The mmp and davinci platforms have DT support for the important
machines and will become DT-only after this.
- s3c64xx, dove, orion5x, and pxa keep some board files to allow
those to be migrated over to DT more easily, but most board files
are getting removed now. DT support on these platforms is partially
working but requires changes to additional drivers for the other
boards.
- omap1, ep93xx, sa1100, footbridge and rpc have no DT support at the
moment but have some boards with known users. Removing the board
files that nobody uses should make it easier to try a DT conversion
if anyone cares.
There is no explicit timeline what happens with the boards that remain
after this removal, but I expect to revisit this in the future, and
with most boards gone, there will be a good time to do a treewide
review of platform drivers that never gained DT support and have no
remaining in-tree board files"
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/CAK8P3a0Z9vGEQbVRBo84bSyPFM-LF+hs5w8ZA51g2Z+NsdtDQA@mail.gmail.com/
* tag 'arm-boardfiles-6.0' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc:
ARM: cns3xxx: add CONFIG_UNUSED_BOARD_FILES dependency
ARM: iop32x: mark as unused
ARM: s3c: mark most board files as unused
ARM: omap1: add Kconfig dependencies for unused boards
ARM: sa1100: mark most boards as unused
ARM: footbridge: mark cats board for removal
ARM: mmp: mark all board files for removal
ARM: ep93xx: mark most board files as unused
ARM: davinci: mark all ATAGS board files as unused
ARM: orion: add ATAGS dependencies
ARM: pxa: add Kconfig dependencies for ATAGS based boards
ARM: add CONFIG_UNUSED_BOARD_FILES
ARM: add ATAGS dependencies to non-DT platforms
7d0d3fa733