From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756614AbZDNXMu (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:12:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754846AbZDNXM2 (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:12:28 -0400 Received: from bedivere.hansenpartnership.com ([66.63.167.143]:34371 "EHLO bedivere.hansenpartnership.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754760AbZDNXM1 (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:12:27 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/14] convert voyager over to the x86 quirks model From: James Bottomley To: Ingo Molnar Cc: LKML , Thomas Gleixner , "H. Peter Anvin" In-Reply-To: <20090414180832.GA25692@elte.hu> References: <1239724300-16371-1-git-send-email-James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> <20090414165722.GD2089@elte.hu> <20090414180832.GA25692@elte.hu> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:12:22 -0500 Message-Id: <1239750743.3638.12.camel@mulgrave> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.3.1 (2.22.3.1-1.fc9) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 20:08 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote: > * Ingo Molnar wrote: > > > > > * James Bottomley wrote: > > > > > 39 files changed, 554 insertions(+), 726 deletions(-) > > > > That diffstat is not against current mainline, is it? > > Would you mind to send a proper diffstat with the revert > > included as well? That will give us a complete picture. > > ok, i did the calculations, and the effect of adding back > x86/Voyager is roughly: > > 48 files changed, 5226 insertions(+), 142 deletions(-) > > That's quite a lot, and lets put this into perspective. Hardly ... you're conflating two issues: one is what is the burden to mainline, which the patch series is about, although only patch 1 (and possibly patch 5) is truly critical to that, the rest are assorted code moves. > You are talking about moving ~5000 lines of legacy code back into > arch/x86/, for a total of *four* Voyager/Linux systems, which are > using _ancient_ 486/P5 era CPUs. That's factually incorrect on both counts. But the real point is that kernel development isn't a popularity contest, it's about the technical merits of the code ... something you've been conspicuously avoiding. > Two of these systems are in your house, two are somewhere unknown: > their owners certainly never sent bugreports against recent mainline > kernels (Voyager didnt even _build_ for a couple of straight kernel > releases), and i suspect those boxes are probably decommissioned > already. > > A single core on my run-of-the-mill x86 laptop has more computing > power than all Voyager/Linux systems on the planet, combined. And > you now want to add back support to the mainline arch/x86 code, > which we are trying hard to keep running on millions of x86 Linux > systems? Well, what can I say, if your laptop is the speed standard for acceptable architectures, then I suppose you'll be removing all of the embedded architectures as well? In spite of your disdain for older processors, just remember that the highest x86 processor with a military spec rating is the 486DX, and one of the things the US department of defence likes about us is that we still support it. Actually, there are a lot of quiet projects using linux because we're happy to support them on older hardware ... it's one of the things that makes Linux different from, say, windows. > You still have not given proper justification for doing that ... The justification is that I'm prepared to maintain it. > Sorry to be the one to say 'no', but the reasons you gave so far > were not very convincing to me. > > Anyway, you seem to be willing to maintain this code it out of tree. > If someone owns such an ancient Voyager box and wants to test a new > kernel then your tree is a good starting point for doing that. > There's really no pressing need to have this in mainline. So the message you want to be giving out as a maintainer is that everything should be developed upstream, except when it's x86? James