Re: possible deprecation and removal of some old QEMU Arm machine types (pxa2xx, omap, sa1110)

[Guenter Roeck]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2024 at 03:41:48PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2024 at 15:36, Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 03:14:21PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > > On Mon, 12 Feb 2024 at 14:36, Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:
> > > > On 2/12/24 04:32, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > > > > The machines I have in mind are:
> > > > >
> > > > > PXA2xx machines:
> > > > >
> > > > > akita                Sharp SL-C1000 (Akita) PDA (PXA270)
> > > > > borzoi               Sharp SL-C3100 (Borzoi) PDA (PXA270)
> > > > > connex               Gumstix Connex (PXA255)
> > > > > mainstone            Mainstone II (PXA27x)
> > > > > spitz                Sharp SL-C3000 (Spitz) PDA (PXA270)
> > > > > terrier              Sharp SL-C3200 (Terrier) PDA (PXA270)
> > > > > tosa                 Sharp SL-6000 (Tosa) PDA (PXA255)
> > > > > verdex               Gumstix Verdex Pro XL6P COMs (PXA270)
> > > > > z2                   Zipit Z2 (PXA27x)
> 
> > > > > OMAP1 machines:
> > > > >
> > > > > cheetah              Palm Tungsten|E aka. Cheetah PDA (OMAP310)
> > > > > sx1                  Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V2
> > > > > sx1-v1               Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V1
> 
> > > > > OMAP2 machines:
> > > > >
> > > > > n800                 Nokia N800 tablet aka. RX-34 (OMAP2420)
> > > > > n810                 Nokia N810 tablet aka. RX-44 (OMAP2420)
> 
> > > > > The one SA1110 machine:
> > > > >
> > > > > collie               Sharp SL-5500 (Collie) PDA (SA-1110)
> 
> > I am copying Arnd, the OMAP1 Linux kernel maintainers, PXA2 maintainers,
> > and the Linux omap mailing list for input. Sorry for the noise for those
> > who don't care, but I think it is useful to have your voices heard.
> 
> Thanks to everybody for your input on this thread. My
> proposal is to drop from QEMU:
>  * all the PXA2xx machines
>  * all the OMAP2 machines
>  * the cheetah OMAP1 machine
> 
> leaving (at least for now) sx1, sx1-v1, collie.
> 
> Rationale:
>  * for QEMU dropping individual machines is much less beneficial
>    than if we can drop support for an entire SoC
>  * the OMAP2 QEMU code in particular is large, old and unmaintained,
>    and none of the OMAP2 kernel maintainers said they were using
>    QEMU in any of their testing/development
>  * although Guenter is currently booting test kernels on some
>    of the PXA2xx machines, nobody seemed to be using them as part
>    of their active kernel development and my impression from the
>    thread is that PXA is the closest of all these SoC families to
>    being dropped from the kernel soon
>  * nobody said they were using cheetah, so it's entirely
>    untested and quite probably broken
>  * on the other hand the OMAP1 sx1 model does seem to be being
>    used as part of kernel development, and there was interest
>    in keeping collie around
> 
> I'm going to mark these as deprecated for the QEMU 9.0 release,
> which by our deprecate-and-drop policy means they will be
> still present in 9.0 (due out in April) and 9.1 (August-ish),
> and removed in 9.2 (December).
> 
> I'm potentially open to persuasion if anybody thinks I'm
> being too drastic here; persuasion that came attached to
> a desire to help modernise the QEMU code for the relevant
> machines would be the most effective :-)
> 

sgtm

Guenter