Re: [RFC, Announce] Unified x86 architecture, arch/x86

Arjan van de Ven
2007-07-20T23:05:08Z

On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 00:32 +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> We are pleased to announce a project we've been working on for some
> time: the unified x86 architecture tree, or "arch/x86" - and we'd like
> to solicit feedback about it.

I really like the idea of a unified source tree for the 2 x86 variants.
The technical differences are really small (of course there are
differences, especially in the boot sequence), and striving to unify as
much as possible while having a clean way to do per 32/64 bit parts as
well is something that imo is the right thing.

I'm more than happy to help with this effort, and have people in my
group at Intel help test and engineer this as well.

The technical approach of first moving (in an automated way) everything
into one directory, and then merge pieces one by one is appealing since
it can be done incrementally and carefully, while testing the "can we do
separate bits" from the start.

So in short, way to go, I hope we can get this thing done as soon as
possible. Heck it looks like the infrastructure (not the unification)
can make it into 2.6.23 merge window still, so that the entire 2.6.23
window can be used to develop merged-functionality pieces...

Greetings,
Arjan van de Ven