Re: Removing architectures without upstream gcc support

[Greg Ungerer]

On 24/02/18 03:10, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 03:43:16PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > Regarding the older architectures I mentioned (m32r, frv, mn10300),
> > > the situation is a bit different as they don't have the problems with
> > > build testing but they do have problems with using less of the
> > > standard interfaces (syscall, timer, gpio, rtc, ...), so they do add
> > > more to the maintenance burden without the nostalgia value of
> > > some of the even older architectures (parisc, alpha, m68k, ia64)
> > > that people maintain mainly for fun.
> >
> > IMHO the magic word is 'maintain'. If someone is actively maintaining it
> > then I don't think we should care too much, if not then while the code
> > may be buildable on current systems does anyone honestly think it works
> > properly if used in anger ?
>
> FWIW, alpha and m68k are known boot with qemu (even though m68k
> generates a warning traceback with the mainline kernel).

At the very least I build every defconfig for every rc and release
kernel for m68k. I also run a ColdFire build through qemu (non-MMU)
and also run it and an MMU build on real hardware. So they are
always checked and by far mostly work - and when they don't I fix
it ASAP.

I am pretty sure Geert does similar for the traditional 68k targets.
NXP still sell ColdFire parts, so for the moment it is not dead
in terms of available silicon.

(*) I know linux-4.16-rc1 and rc2 issue a warning on boot of a
non-MMU m68k/coldfire build due to the addition of a warning by
Christoph in 205e1b7f51e4 ("dma-mapping: warn when there is no
coherent_dma_mask") but I haven't had a chance to track what the
exact problem is there.

Regards
Greg