Re: [patch 1/4] x86, apic: Only use default_wait_for_init_deassert

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Thu Feb 06 2014 - 17:40:41 EST


On 02/06/2014 02:31 PM, David Rientjes wrote:
>
> How do we usually do that? Do we add a big fat warning for anyone who is
> using it for a few releases or just yank support out entirely and see if
> we're surprised?
>

We don't really *have* a good way of deprecation, this is the problem.
Usually it doesn't happen until we find out that a bug snuck its way in
and "X hasn't worked for N releases now, and noone has noticed."
Voyager was finally killed off because the maintainer of the port was
unwilling to keep up with the mainstream kernel flux. The i386 explicit
deprecation was definitely one of the more high-profile removals of a
largely working port, and was a (brief) Kernel Summit topic.

I would love to see NumaQ, VisWS, Summit and ES7000 just nuked. In
fact, I'm thinking that unless someone steps up and explicitly claims
ownership of those platforms by adding their name to MAINTAINERS (or
reiterating them in the case of VisWS, which MAINTAINERS entry says "for
2.6") we should just rip them all out.

Anyone who wants to disagree?

-hpa

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