Hi,
On 01/06/2014 10:09 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 5:42 AM, Hans de Goede hdegoede@redhat.com wrote:
Hi All,
[ Apologies for the delayed reply. I actually turned off all my computers during PTO this time around. ]
As you probably know in my spare time I'm working on Linux Allwinner SoC support.
We (the linux-sunxi community) are currently making good progress on getting Allwinner SoCs supported in the upstream kernel. It looks like the majority of it will land in 3.14 and 3.15. As such I believe the time has come to start supporting Allwinner SoCs with the official Fedora kernels ootb for F-21.
I've written a Feature page for this, which you can find here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/AllwinnerSunxiSupport
This will likely require carrying some kernel patches for 1-2 kernel releases, until all the necessary bits for headless operation have landed upstream.
As always I'm willing to put my time were my work is, and I'll maintain these patches for as long as necessary. To give you an idea of where things are going, here is a break down of the tree I'm currently using for testing and development, see: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi/commits/sunxi-devel
This branch contains 3.13-rc5
the following, which should all go upstream for 3.14:
https://github.com/mripard/linux/commits/sunxi-clk-for-3.13 https://github.com/mripard/linux/commits/sunxi-drivers-for-3.14 https://github.com/mripard/linux/commits/sunxi-core-for-3.14 https://github.com/mripard/linux/commits/sunxi-dt-for-3.14 sunxi-bits of:
https://git.linaro.org/people/daniel.lezcano/linux.git/shortlog/refs/heads/c... Emilio's "[PATCH v3 00/13] clk: sunxi: add PLL5 and PLL6 support" series
So rawhide (F21) just rolls along. It's at 3.13-rc7, and it will move to 3.14 merge window kernels roughly a week or so after 3.13 final is released. If we picked up patches for this, I'd rather just wait for all of that to be merged during the 3.14 merge window rather than pick it up right now.
Right, that actually is my plan too, I guess I should have been more explicit about that.
It's still well within the timeframe of F21 and I don't have to suffer through patches failing to apply during the 3.14 merge window.
Right.
- the following which is not quite ready for 3.14 yet, but people
are working hard to get it ready so hopefully we will see some of it in 3.14, and the rest should make 3.15:
Emilio's sunxi-clk branch: patches not part of the above set David's and mine sunxi-mmc work Chen's gmac work Oliver's ahci work Arokux' ehci work mripard's "ARM: sunxi: Add A31 High Speed Timer Support" series wens' "v2 of A20 external output clock support patch series" hansg's resistive touchscreen controller driver (rtp) including temp sensor support
Of the above list, we should at a minimum carry the mmc, gmac (gigabit nic) and ahci patches if those don't get upstream in time. USB support would also be very nice, but is not a must have. The last 3 patch-sets we don't need.
The rest of those (and anything that didn't make 3.14) could be picked up after 3.14-rc1, since most of the merge fallout is dealt with by then. Do the above approaches seem reasonable?
Yes.
I do have a broader question. I understand the importance and thoughts behind bringing device support in for a popular board before it's upstream. You want to attract users to Fedora ARM, etc. It makes some sense and lets people play with their shiny toys with a minimum amount of hassle.
However, it's a double edge sword. As we've seen with BBB to a degree, sometimes things don't work after a kernel version bump and then their toys are broken and they go back to using vendor kernels or other distros. I worry that by bringing in these things before they're upstream ready to attract users, we're also setting them up for the very hassles we're trying to avoid. So, in your estimation, how possible are rebases and other changes likely to cause issues with AllWinner devices?
As long as people pair up the kernel version with the matching dts files (which our recent uboot config scripts do automatically) I don't expect any issues. Regressions can never be avoided 100%, but I don't expect this to be more regression prone then say suspend/resume issues on your average laptop after a rebase.
Note I'm currently hashing out the dt bindings for usb + ahci in upstream discussions (as well as getting the actual code upstream), so I expect those to be more or less set in stone by the time we get to the F-21 betas.
Regards,
Hans