Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] RISC-V: defconfig: Enable Goldfish RTC driver

[Paul Walmsley]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2019, Alistair Francis wrote:

> I think it makese sense for this to go into Linux first.
> 
> The QEMU patches are going to be accepted, just some nit picking to do
> first :)
> 
> After that we have to wait for a PR and then a QEMU release until most
> people will see the change in QEMU. In that time Linux 5.4 will be
> released, if this can make it into 5.4 then everyone using 5.4 will get
> the new RTC as soon as they upgrade QEMU (QEMU provides the device
> tree). If this has to wait until QEMU has support then it won't be
> supported for users until even later.
> 
> Users are generally slow to update kernels (buildroot is still using
> 5.1 by default for example) so the sooner changes like this go in the
> better.

The defconfigs are really just for kernel developers.  We expect users to 
define their own Kconfigs for their own needs.

If using the Goldfish code really is what we all want to do (see below), 
then the kernel patch that should go in right away -- which also has no 
dependence on what QEMU does -- would be the first patch of this series:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-riscv/20190925063706.56175-2-anup.patel@xxxxxxx/

And that should go in via whoever is maintaining the Goldfish driver, not 
the RISC-V tree.  (It looks like drivers/platform/goldfish is completely 
unmaintained - a red flag! - so probably someone needs to persuade Greg or 
Andrew to take it.)

Incidentally, just looking at drivers/platform/goldfish, that driver seems 
to be some sort of Google-specific RPC driver.  Are you all really sure 
you want to enable that just for an RTC?  Seems like overkill - there are 
much simpler RTCs out there.


- Paul