On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:58:59 -0700 Nicholas Chin nic.c3.14@gmail.com wrote:
And given that there is no way to guarantee that a Mainboard doesn't get removed, we'd also need to watch what is happening with the GM45 Thinkpads as well, as this problem also affect these computers.
Could you elaborate on this? I'm not aware of any planned changes that would result in GM45 being dropped. Is it just about finding people to provide support for those boards/chipset? And if so, does the same not apply to other older chipsets like i945 or x4x? Or even Sandy/Ivy Bridge?
Maintained boards/computers can be removed (that happened to the APU1), because the fact that a computer is maintained only gives some guarantees that patches will be reviewed.
So if at some point there is a notice in the release notes that require to update some code to continue supporting these computers, and that: (1) we don't look at the release notes (2) the maintainers don't update the code either (there is nothing that guarantees that the code will necessarily be updated). (3) nobody send patches to fix that then these computers could be dropped.
So it's worth looking at release notes to at least see if there is a risk of removal or not, and probably find a way to make sure that they don't get removed for instance by reserving some time or funds to work on adapting the code if issue arise.
Denis.