Re: [PATCH] staging: ion: remove from the tree

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 09:31:27AM -0400, Laura Abbott wrote:
> On 8/27/20 8:36 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > The ION android code has long been marked to be removed, now that we
> > dma-buf support merged into the real part of the kernel.
> > 
> > It was thought that we could wait to remove the ion kernel at a later
> > time, but as the out-of-tree Android fork of the ion code has diverged
> > quite a bit, and any Android device using the ion interface uses that
> > forked version and not this in-tree version, the in-tree copy of the
> > code is abandonded and not used by anyone.
> > 
> > Combine this abandoned codebase with the need to make changes to it in
> > order to keep the kernel building properly, which then causes merge
> > issues when merging those changes into the out-of-tree Android code, and
> > you end up with two different groups of people (the in-kernel-tree
> > developers, and the Android kernel developers) who are both annoyed at
> > the current situation.  Because of this problem, just drop the in-kernel
> > copy of the ion code now, as it's not used, and is only causing problems
> > for everyone involved.
> > 
> > Cc: "Arve Hjønnevåg" <arve@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: "Christian König" <christian.koenig@xxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Christian Brauner <christian@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Hridya Valsaraju <hridya@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Joel Fernandes <joel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: John Stultz <john.stultz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Laura Abbott <laura@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Martijn Coenen <maco@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Shuah Khan <shuah@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Sumit Semwal <sumit.semwal@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Todd Kjos <tkjos@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Cc: dri-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Cc: linaro-mm-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> We discussed this at the Android MC on Monday and the plan was to
> remove it after the next LTS release.

As 5.10 will be the next LTS release, I have now merged it to my
"testing" branch to go into 5.11-rc1.

thanks,

greg k-h