[Arm-netbook] Linus wingeing about ARM

[Henrik Nordström]

fre 2012-10-12 klockan 07:58 +0100 skrev luke.leighton:

>  wishing that to happen does not make it happen, especially when SoC
> vendors do not communicate with upstream and repeatedly copy rather
> than consolidate.

There is a shift taking place there as well, with most major SoC vendors
actively working on getting things mainline, some even before cunsumer
release.

>  also, SoC vendors have nothing to do with hardware device manufacturers.
> 
>  so it still does not resolve the issue of having to customise a
> linux-kernel-plus-a-devicetree-file to a device.

No, but it reduces it mainly to cut together the rigt pieces of device
tree bits for the included hardware, plus optional kernel customization.
And over time we are likely to se less of the latter for devices using
mainline supported SoCs.

The ones not pushing mainline will obviously continue as before, they do
not care about maintainability (they often do one kernel only per
lifecycle of a SoC generation or three)

But devicetree is easier to work with, especially when having multiple
similar devices with slightly different hardware. So I expect even those
to be pushed by market pressure towards the devicetree direction.

But it's not going to happen over night obviously.

>  so the linux kernel has pushed the problem away and out of their
> responsibility?  so what.  actually creating a real hardware device is
> still just as much a nightmare.

I disagree.

Some of the effect is seen already in Allwinner based devices where the
ODM configuration is pushed from kernel to sys_config.fex(script.bin
source).

Regards
Henrik