Nico Huber:
On 29.11.21 14:49, awokd wrote:
Branching
I know some people are easily offended by the thought, but I want to mention it anyway as it seems to me like a cheap solution for the com- munity as a whole. We could maintain platforms on separate branches.
Is this different than the status quo?
Yes, these ports wouldn't hold the master branch back anymore.
Meant the status quo approach of deprecating boards and leaving to an older branch. I think you are saying it would be a named branch instead.
I think the concern here is once platforms are dropped from master, people rarely take the time to consider or backport any improvements to the out of sight, out of mind old branches. On the other hand, concerns about trying to maintain code with mounds of technical debt are entirely valid.
They are out of sight either way, IMHO. The original deprecation notice is over a year old, why would anyone still put any effort into it? I assume if there was a dedicated place for these ports, people might even be encouraged to work on it because they don't have to fear that the ports are completely abandoned soon.
I guess it depends most on the maintainers of such a branch. If they'd let it rot, things won't get better of course.
This might not be a bad compromise.
Porting
Given that we are talking about platforms that are not based on native coreboot code but unmaintained vendor code instead, it might help to port these platforms to coreboot proper.
You mention the KGPE-D16 as an example. I hadn't followed at the time, but from what I can tell it was a well-written, coreboot native port.
AFAIR, it's the exact opposite.
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry if I'm poking at an old wound for anybody.