[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCHv2] Linux 3.16 support on mvebu

[Maxime Ripard]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 06:38:00PM +0100, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> On 28 October 2014 16:59, Maxime Ripard
> <maxime.ripard at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 04:29:15PM +0100, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> >> On 9 October 2014 17:10, Maxime Ripard <maxime.ripard at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> >> > This is the second version of my rather big changes to support the
> >> > 3.16 kernel, and more specifically on the mvebu SoCs.
> >> >
> >> > The first patch ports the existing 3.14 patches to 3.16, and creates a
> >> > generic configuration for it.
> >> >
> >> > http://free-electrons.com/~maxime/pub/openwrt-3.16/v2-0001-linux-Add-3.16-support.patch
> >>
> >> A kind of problem with 3.16 was its support as it wasn't picked for
> >> LTS by anyone.
> >>
> >> So personally I'd prefer to use another kernel version for OpenWrt
> >> release. A one with LTS would be great. Recently we've started working
> >> on 3.18, which is probably the nearest kernel with a chance of LTS.
> >> And it case it won't be LTS, personally I'd look for another one.
> >
> > I wasn't aware of such policy. Is there a reason for 3.13 for example
> > to be supported then?
> 
> It's what some ppl prefer, maybe even more since the AA release. 10.04
> was based on 3.3 which caused some problems.
> I don't really know about 3.13. My personal great wish is to kill 3.3,
> 3.8 and 3.13 ASAP in OpenWrt.

Ok, good to know :)

> >> > The second patch does pretty much the same thing but for the mvebu
> >> > target.
> >>
> >> Would it be possible for you to switch to 3.18? It's still not ready
> >> (not compiling) as it was started just yesterday. But I think we will
> >> try to stabilize this one.
> >
> > I needed a kernel >= 3.16, so 3.18 is fine for me. I can of course
> > help to bring it up, and I'll be happy to, but if there's a chance for
> > my work to actually help and be merged.
> >
> > So far, I sent three change sets:
> >   - One that, as I just discovered, has been silently merged. I guess
> >     it's ok.
> >   - One to upgrade to 3.16, which will apparently not get merged,
> >     because some private (as in !public) effort as been going on and
> >     just appeared out of nowhere on the git repo, without any posting
> >     or reviews. I didn't receive any mail warning me of that effort,
> >     or why my work was considered pointless, before yours, three weeks
> >     later.
> >   - One to fix real issues that were preventing *any* openwrt image to
> >     be flashed, let alone work, on one officially "supported"
> >     device. This one being the most critical only got two reviews,
> >     that were just basically saying "meh. I don't like it", but never
> >     got any suggestions on how to actually fix things the right way.
> >
> > I'm not trying to force my way in, I'm really not, I'd be really happy
> > to improve my patches so that these bugs end up being fixed
> > upstream. But there need to be some discussion, and guidance probably,
> > for that, and so far there's been none.
> >
> > These were my first contributions to OpenWRT, and I can't really say
> > I've been pleased with the experience so far.
> 
> I can't really say why your work wasn't properly reviewed/accepted.
> Adding new kernel is always a big task to do & to review. I guess
> noone got time to spend few hours checking your 3.16 patches :( And
> it's really complex for one developer to handle all subsystem changes.
> I also don't see a good solution for that.

Yeah, I feel the pain. I did this already, and it's why I don't really
like to do it once again if it's just going to be ignored again.

> 1) Someone spends hours working on new kernel support silently
> Result: people complaining because of non-public & slow work.
> 
> 2) Someone tries to work on new kernel in a public way
> Result: people complaining it's not working out-of-box, see:
> https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/18236

Well, I don't think it was public enough then. The 3.16 patches have
been around for quite some time, some people actually tested it, sent
some feedbacks, we fixed some issues, before getting it merged.

I don't think this is really the case for 3.18, is it?

> I didn't really spend hours working on 3.18 in some non-public way. I
> just ported most patches in ~2 hours and pushed what I got. Now I need
> help on cleaning that up.
> 
> I'm also not sure about other of your patches. My only guess I ppl
> didn't focus on them since there wasn't 3.16 in the first place. Or
> maybe you could send separated patch per patch?

The other patches were not related to 3.16, and were sent as a
separate patch set. Sending these patches one by one wouldn't make
much sense.

Maxime

-- 
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com
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