Removing pcap?

Removing pcap?

[Alexandre Belloni]

Hello Antonio, Harald,

I've had a look at the PCAP RTC driver because I'm removing a few
deprecated APIs. While doing so, I've discovered that the driver has
never worked properly because PCAP_RTC_TOD_MASK and PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK
are both missing a bit so every day would roll over at 18:12:15 and the
whole the date would roll over in 2014.

I discussed with Arnd about 59ee93a528b9 ("ARM: pxa: remove irq_to_gpio
from ezx-pcap driver") and it seems the whole EZX support has been
broken for a while.

Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?

-- 
Alexandre Belloni, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com

Re: Removing pcap?

[Harald Welte]

Hi Alexandre,

On Sun, Apr 07, 2019 at 04:07:41PM +0200, Alexandre Belloni wrote:
> Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?

I've left OpenEZX behind quite a long time ago.  Antonio was working
on it for some more time, I don't know if he's still actively using
or maintaining it.

From my personal point of view, it's only historically relevant and
can certainly be removed from current-day mainline kernels.  That's of
course unless some other people are still actively using it, which
I somewhat doubt about a decade since those phones were last made.

Regards,
	Harlad

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge@gnumonks.org>           http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
============================================================================
"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
                                                  (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

Re: Removing pcap? (EZX support in mainline linux)

[Antonio Ospite]

On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 16:07:41 +0200
Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com> wrote:

> Hello Antonio, Harald,
>

Hi everyone,

adding Robert to CC as he is listed as the current maintainer of
ARM/EZX SMARTPHONES in the MAINTAINERS file.

> I've had a look at the PCAP RTC driver because I'm removing a few
> deprecated APIs. While doing so, I've discovered that the driver has
> never worked properly because PCAP_RTC_TOD_MASK and PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK
> are both missing a bit so every day would roll over at 18:12:15 and the
> whole the date would roll over in 2014.
> 
> I discussed with Arnd about 59ee93a528b9 ("ARM: pxa: remove irq_to_gpio
> from ezx-pcap driver") and it seems the whole EZX support has been
> broken for a while.
>

As Harald said in another message I tried taking over OpenEZX for a
while, but eventually lost interest.

JFTR some parts of the project has been backed up here:
https://gitlab.com/openezx

I should also have a git backup of the wiki somewhere.

> Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?
> 

I am not aware of any active user but I'd leave the final word to
Robert, IIRC he received some EZX hardware "recently".

FWIW I think EZX code can be removed if it is a maintenance burden for
anyone.

Thank you,
   Antonio

-- 
Antonio Ospite
https://ao2.it
https://twitter.com/ao2it

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Removing pcap? (EZX support in mainline linux)

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 8:58 AM Antonio Ospite <ao2@ao2.it> wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 16:07:41 +0200
> Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com> wrote:
> adding Robert to CC as he is listed as the current maintainer of
> ARM/EZX SMARTPHONES in the MAINTAINERS file.
>
> > I've had a look at the PCAP RTC driver because I'm removing a few
> > deprecated APIs. While doing so, I've discovered that the driver has
> > never worked properly because PCAP_RTC_TOD_MASK and PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK
> > are both missing a bit so every day would roll over at 18:12:15 and the
> > whole the date would roll over in 2014.
> >
> > I discussed with Arnd about 59ee93a528b9 ("ARM: pxa: remove irq_to_gpio
> > from ezx-pcap driver") and it seems the whole EZX support has been
> > broken for a while.
> >
>
> As Harald said in another message I tried taking over OpenEZX for a
> while, but eventually lost interest.
>
> JFTR some parts of the project has been backed up here:
> https://gitlab.com/openezx
>
> I should also have a git backup of the wiki somewhere.
>
> > Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?
> >
>
> I am not aware of any active user but I'd leave the final word to
> Robert, IIRC he received some EZX hardware "recently".
>
> FWIW I think EZX code can be removed if it is a maintenance burden for
> anyone.

I would prefer if we could either keep or remove all of the ezx code, but not
just remove a particular driver. Removing it all now would let us skip that
discussion the next time someone has a problem with another device driver
for it.

      Arnd

Re: Removing pcap? (EZX support in mainline linux)

[Robert Jarzmik]

Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 8:58 AM Antonio Ospite <ao2@ao2.it> wrote:
>> On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 16:07:41 +0200
>> Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com> wrote:
>> adding Robert to CC as he is listed as the current maintainer of
>> ARM/EZX SMARTPHONES in the MAINTAINERS file.
>>
>> > I've had a look at the PCAP RTC driver because I'm removing a few
>> > deprecated APIs. While doing so, I've discovered that the driver has
>> > never worked properly because PCAP_RTC_TOD_MASK and PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK
>> > are both missing a bit so every day would roll over at 18:12:15 and the
>> > whole the date would roll over in 2014.
>> >
>> > I discussed with Arnd about 59ee93a528b9 ("ARM: pxa: remove irq_to_gpio
>> > from ezx-pcap driver") and it seems the whole EZX support has been
>> > broken for a while.
>> >
>>
>> As Harald said in another message I tried taking over OpenEZX for a
>> while, but eventually lost interest.
>>
>> JFTR some parts of the project has been backed up here:
>> https://gitlab.com/openezx
>>
>> I should also have a git backup of the wiki somewhere.
>>
>> > Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?
>> >
>>
>> I am not aware of any active user but I'd leave the final word to
>> Robert, IIRC he received some EZX hardware "recently".
>>
>> FWIW I think EZX code can be removed if it is a maintenance burden for
>> anyone.
>
> I would prefer if we could either keep or remove all of the ezx code, but not
> just remove a particular driver. Removing it all now would let us skip that
> discussion the next time someone has a problem with another device driver
> for it.

I'm on the same page here.  I'm not strongly either for or against EZX removal
(which would impact AFAIK 6 old Motorola smartphones).

If I can find the wiki archives to cross-check the mask issue (especially
PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK), I wouldn't mind seeing a patch on that if it is kept.

If I can make the EZX boot (the one I got from Antonia), I could even test
it. As if it's worth it, I'm not personally an active user of this specific
platform, so if no one is, one less would be less maintainance burden.

Cheers.

-- 
Robert

Re: Removing pcap? (EZX support in mainline linux)

[Antonio Ospite]

On Mon, 08 Apr 2019 21:14:44 +0200
Robert Jarzmik <robert.jarzmik@free.fr> wrote:

> Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 8:58 AM Antonio Ospite <ao2@ao2.it> wrote:
> >> On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 16:07:41 +0200
> >> Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com> wrote:
> >> adding Robert to CC as he is listed as the current maintainer of
> >> ARM/EZX SMARTPHONES in the MAINTAINERS file.
> >>
> >> > I've had a look at the PCAP RTC driver because I'm removing a few
> >> > deprecated APIs. While doing so, I've discovered that the driver has
> >> > never worked properly because PCAP_RTC_TOD_MASK and PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK
> >> > are both missing a bit so every day would roll over at 18:12:15 and the
> >> > whole the date would roll over in 2014.
> >> >
> >> > I discussed with Arnd about 59ee93a528b9 ("ARM: pxa: remove irq_to_gpio
> >> > from ezx-pcap driver") and it seems the whole EZX support has been
> >> > broken for a while.
> >> >
> >>
> >> As Harald said in another message I tried taking over OpenEZX for a
> >> while, but eventually lost interest.
> >>
> >> JFTR some parts of the project has been backed up here:
> >> https://gitlab.com/openezx
> >>
> >> I should also have a git backup of the wiki somewhere.
> >>
> >> > Is it worth fixing the RTC driver or could I remove it?
> >> >
> >>
> >> I am not aware of any active user but I'd leave the final word to
> >> Robert, IIRC he received some EZX hardware "recently".
> >>
> >> FWIW I think EZX code can be removed if it is a maintenance burden for
> >> anyone.
> >
> > I would prefer if we could either keep or remove all of the ezx code, but not
> > just remove a particular driver. Removing it all now would let us skip that
> > discussion the next time someone has a problem with another device driver
> > for it.
> 
> I'm on the same page here.  I'm not strongly either for or against EZX removal
> (which would impact AFAIK 6 old Motorola smartphones).
> 
> If I can find the wiki archives to cross-check the mask issue (especially
> PCAP_RTC_DAY_MASK), I wouldn't mind seeing a patch on that if it is kept.
>

Just in case, I uploaded the wiki backup here
https://gitlab.com/openezx/openezx-wiki

> If I can make the EZX boot (the one I got from Antonia), I could even test
> it. As if it's worth it, I'm not personally an active user of this specific
> platform, so if no one is, one less would be less maintainance burden.
> 

Not sure what the mainline status is. The last time I checked, several
years ago, to have an "almost" usable experience some
out-of-tree patches from https://gitlab.com/openezx/openezx were needed.

The repository is a topgit repository. feel free to pop in the #openezx
channel of Freenode for any details.

I reported this discussion on that IRC channel to see if there is anyone
interested. Let's wait a couple of days and then decide.

Thanks,
   Antonio

-- 
Antonio Ospite
https://ao2.it
https://twitter.com/ao2it

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?