Re: [GIT PULL] omap dss board clean-up for v3.10 merge window

[Tony Lindgren <tony@atomide.com>]

* Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen@ti.com> [130613 01:02]:
> Hi Tony,
> 
> On 03/06/13 15:20, Tomi Valkeinen wrote:
> 
> Any feeback about the below? I'm currently aiming for the option 2, and
> pushing only the driver changes for the next merge window, as that
> allows me to go forward without any arch/arm changes.

Yes that sounds good to me. Then we may be able to do a small follow-up
branch at the end of the merge window for the arch/arm changes. But
up to you how you prefer to handle it, I'm sure you're well aware of
the pains of cross tree dependencies by now :)

Regards,

Tony
 
> > I have a somewhat similar situation again for 3.11 (or possibly for
> > 3.12). I hope to hear from you what you think would be the best approach.
> > 
> > The background is that the omap display subsystem has a bunch of panel
> > drivers, and these drivers have used an OMAP DSS specific bus and driver
> > model. For various reasons I'm now converting the panel drivers to be
> > based on the panel's control bus, i.e. a panel controlled via i2c would
> > be an i2c device/driver, a panel not controlled at all would be a
> > platform device/driver, etc.
> > 
> > The work involves changing the omapdss driver, converting the panel
> > drivers to the new driver model, and changing the board files that use
> > the panel.
> > 
> > I see two main approaches to this:
> > 
> > 1) Convert the panel drivers "in-place", i.e. have a commit which
> > changes a panel driver to the new model. This would mean that the
> > instant the commit is in, the boards using the panel do not work until
> > the board file has been changed.
> > 
> > 2) Convert the panel to a new file, i.e. basically make a copy of the
> > panel driver while converting it. This way the boards using the old
> > panel drivers will continue working. (This is how I have my patches
> > currently organized).
> > 
> > Option 1) feels more natural, but if the arch and driver changes go
> > through separate trees, there's a piece of history during the merge
> > window where the displays won't work on the OMAP boards.
> > 
> > Option 2) allows us to keep the boards always functional if the new
> > panel drivers are merged in 3.11, and the board file changes are merged
> > in 3.12.
> > 
> > The downside is that it takes two kernel versions to get this in, and a
> > third kernel version to finally remove all the old code. 3.11 and 3.12
> > would contain unused code, some of which will be in the kernel image
> > (omapdss side changes) and some of which won't be compiled at all (the
> > new panel drivers).
> > 
> > Do you think option 2 and splitting the work into three kernel versions
> > is the way to go? Do you have some other ideas how to organize the merge
> > of these kind of changes?
> > 
> >  Tomi
> > 
> > 
> 
>