Building kernel for more than one SoC

[linux@arm.linux.org.uk (Russell King - ARM Linux)]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 01:59:36PM +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> I'm told that it should be possible to build a kernel that will run on
> two different SoC chips.  They're closely related (same ARM9 core,
> many identical internal peripherals -- AT91SAM9G20 and 'G25), and
> would likely have identical external hardware.
> 
> In order to handle the internal periphals that differ, it was
> recommended that I use loadable modules to keep the kernel size small.
> However, my root filesystem is in RAM, so I don't see how loadable
> modules helps unless I remove all of the .ko files from the root
> filesystem after the kernel has booted.

I think whoever made that recommendation probably isn't aware of the
direction that mainline kernels are heading.

Where we're going with mainline kernels is to have a set of drivers
which work irrespective of the hardware you have.

We've actually had this policy for about the last decade - we've
supported building the same family of SoCs into one single kernel
(identified by their mach-* directory) and expecting that their
drivers will cope with the differences between the SoCs at runtime.
(Note that the CPU itself has never really come into it; we've had
good abstractions for the CPU support since the late 90's, with the
exception of a borderline between the ARMv5 and ARMv6 architectures.)

Whether the Atmel code does that or not, I don't know, but it _should_
do it.

Over the last few years, we've been moving mainline towards even
tighter integration, where it's possible to build completely
dissimilar SoCs together, so ultimately we end up with: legacy kernels,
one multi-platform ARMv5 and earlier kernel, and one multi-platform
ARMv6 and later kernel.

> It seems it would be simpler to just link in all required drivers for
> both chips and discard the ones that aren't needed after kernel
> initialization.

Even better is to abstract the differences and have the same driver
code deal with the different variants internally - the selection of
which variant being controlled via the device tree "compatible"
property, or another appropriate method.

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