Re: [PATCH 0/8] generic command line v6

["Daniel Walker (danielwa)" <danielwa@cisco.com>]

On Thu, Nov 09, 2023 at 05:51:42PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu,  9 Nov 2023 17:38:04 -0800 Daniel Walker <danielwa@cisco.com> wrote:
> 
> > This release is an up-rev of the v5 patches. No additional features have
> > been added. Some changes were mode to function names and some changes to
> > Kconfig dependencies. Also updated the config conversion for mips.
> > 
> > There are a number of people who have expressed interest in these
> > patches either by asking for them to be merge or testing them. If
> > people are so inclined please continue to request them to be merge
> > or to ask the status of the next release. It's helpful to motivate me to
> > release them again and for the maintainers to see the interest
> > generated.
> > 
> > These patches have been used by Cisco Systems, Inc. on millions of
> > released products to great effect. Hopefully they can be used by the
> > entire Linux eco system.
> > 
> 
> fyi, none of the above is suitable for a [0/N] changelog - it's all
> transitory stuff which tells readers nothing much about what the
> patchset does.
 
I did not think about it this way. It's because I've submitted this so many
times. I guess I assume everyone knows what it is.

> And that info is sorely missed.  I can see that it's a code cleanup,
> but I'm sure Cisco wouldn't expend resources to maintain such a thing. 
> There's something else here.

I think the prior submissions there was no cover letter, maybe I should just
achoo that entirely.

> In [1/8] I see "Even with mips and powerpc enhancement the needs of
> Cisco are not met on these platforms" and "This unified implementation
> offers the same functionality needed by Cisco on all platform which we
> enable it on".
> 
> Well OK, what are these needs?   What functionality changes does this
> patchset offer which Cisco finds useful?  IOW, what were the
> requirements?  What's wrong with the old code and how does this
> patchset fix/enhance that?

The limitation is that you can't append and prepend to the command line at the
same time in any of the architectures. Having access to both allows OEMs to deal
with broken bootloaders which can't easily be upgraded. Others have responded
that they also use these patches for this same reason.

In 2/8 and 3/8 I modify the insert-sys-cert tool to allow modification of the
command line append and prepend after the build. This allow for an SDK
provided with a binary kernel and for the command line append/prepend to still
be modified identically to how that's done with certificates.

Making all this generic means each platform has a unified set of command line
services. Cisco uses x86/arm32/arm64/mips/powerpc , and it's nice to have all
the same features across platforms.

> 
> I see the patchset updates nothing under Documentation/.  Should it do
> so?  Could it do so?

The only documentation is Kconfig descriptions and commit messages. I suppose it
could have something under Documentation/. The only part which could use more
documentation are the changes in 2/8 and 3/8. That feature is maybe confusing
and has limitations which are maybe not clear. Although the same limitation exist for
inserting certificates.

> 
> I don't know what is the expected merge patch for this work.  I can
> grab them if no other maintainer is in the firing line.

merge patch ? Do you mean merge description ? I think your the maintainer in the
firing line for this one.

Daniel