Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] DT bindings as ABI [was: Do we havepeople interested in device tree janitoring / cleanup?]

From: David Woodhouse
Date: Thu Aug 01 2013 - 06:19:04 EST


On Wed, 2013-07-31 at 17:26 -0400, jonsmirl@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Alternatively you may be of the belief that it is impossible to get
> rid of the board specific code. But x86 doesn't have any of it, why
> should ARM?

The reason x86 doesn't have it is because it carries three decades worth
of legacy baggage so that it can still look like a 1980s IBM PC when
necessary.

There *have* been some x86 platforms which abandon that legacy crap, and
for those we *do* have board-specific code. (Is James still maintaining
Voyager support? It feels very strange to talk about Voyager with it
*not* being the 'legacy crap' in question...)

We've even seen *recent* attempts to abandon the legacy crap in the
embedded x86 space, which backtracked and added it all back again â in
part because x86 lacked any sane way to describe the hardware if it
wasn't pretending to be a PC. ACPI doesn't cut it, and DT "wasn't
invented here"...

Unless you want the ARM world to settle on a strategy of "all the world
is an Assabet", I'd be careful what you wish for...

--
dwmw2

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