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

[Peter Maydell]

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)
> >
> I test akita, borzoi, spitz, and terrier. Upstream Linux removed support
> for mainstone, tosa, and z2 from the Linux kernel as of version 6.0, so
> I am no longer testing those.
>
> I never managed to boot connex or verdex.
>
> > OMAP1 machines:
> >
> > cheetah              Palm Tungsten|E aka. Cheetah PDA (OMAP310)
> > sx1                  Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V2
> > sx1-v1               Siemens SX1 (OMAP310) V1
> >
> I test sx1. I don't think I ever tried cheetah, and I could not get sx1-v1
> to work.
>
> > OMAP2 machines:
> >
> > n800                 Nokia N800 tablet aka. RX-34 (OMAP2420)
> > n810                 Nokia N810 tablet aka. RX-44 (OMAP2420)
> >
> I never managed to get those to boot the Linux kernel.
>
> > The one SA1110 machine:
> >
> > collie               Sharp SL-5500 (Collie) PDA (SA-1110)
> >
> I do test collie.
>
> All the ones I use still boot the latest Linux kernel.
>
> > Obviously if we can remove all the machines that used a given
> > SoC, that's much more effective than if we just delete one or two.
> >
> > I don't have any test images for the SA1110 or OMAP1 machines,
> > so those are the ones I am most keen to be able to drop.
> > I do have test images for a few of the pxa2xx and the OMAP2 machines.
> >
> I don't mind dropping them, just listing what I use for testing the
> Linux kernel. I suspect I may be the only "user" of those boards,
> though, both in Linux and qemu.

Mmm; there's not much point in both QEMU and the kernel
maintaining code that nobody's using. Are you considering
dropping support for any of these SoC families from the kernel?

It sounds like between the two of us we do have at least one
test image per SoC type if we do keep any of these, but
if it isn't going to inconvenience kernel testing I'm
inclined to go ahead with deprecate-and-drop for the whole lot.
(With QEMU's deprecate-and-drop policy, that would be "announce
deprecation now for 9.0, keep in 9.1, remove before 9.2 release
at the end of the year".) At a minimum I would like to drop
the OMAP1 and OMAP2 boards, as that's the biggest code burden.

thanks
-- PMM