[URGENT] - The KCMA-D8 is going to be removed from coreboot unless people cough up a board status update

This is a great board that many use and it DOES work - it needs a status
update ASAP to prevent it from being removed in the next release.

I am unable to do this myself as I use mine for an important router.

At the rate things are going soon there will be no non-development
boards that are still in the repos due to the arbitrary increasing of
standards.

[Pierre P]

Hi,

I have a KCMA-D8 and am willing to provide a status update but have no idea what is the formal way to do it.

I guess it begins with testing a specific version (4.7 or latest source ?). Please could you point me to a procedure.

Thanks

________________________________
From: coreboot  on behalf of [e-mail] 
Sent: Thursday, April 5, 2018 12:36 AM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [coreboot] [URGENT] - The KCMA-D8 is going to be removed from coreboot unless people cough up a board status update

This is a great board that many use and it DOES work - it needs a status
update ASAP to prevent it from being removed in the next release.

I am unable to do this myself as I use mine for an important router.

At the rate things are going soon there will be no non-development
boards that are still in the repos due to the arbitrary increasing of
standards.

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 3:38 PM [e-mail]  wrote:
> At the rate things are going soon there will be no non-development
> boards that are still in the repos due to the arbitrary increasing of
> standards.

I can tell you, based on the 19 years of this project's existence, that it
was not arbitrary, and it was not increasing. We have had to continuously
evaluate what boards to keep visible at tip of tree and which to drop.
We've obsoleted dead hardware for years -- it's why the Alpha and PPC
support went away long ago.

There's a clear cost to keeping boards in tip of tree which no one is
using. To use an easy case, keeping Alpha in would require us to continue
making sure it built, but without any assurance that it worked. "Just
builds" is a bad policy, as we've learned over and over again.

A few years back we formalized the criteria by which we deprecate boards.
And it's simple: if there is no evidence that a board has been tested for a
long enough period of time, we drop it from tip of tree, because there's no
way to know if a build from tip of tree will work. You do NOT want boards
in tip of tree unless you know they work. As has been pointed out, many
times, the board doesn't disappear from the git repo. You have only to
check out the coreboot version in which the board was known to work.

On a side note, I would request that you make your language less
confrontational. You keep characterizing decisions you don't agree with as
"wrong." We can disagree without being disagreeable.

ron

[Duncan]

How urgent is "urgent" given that the board remains in git, and all it
takes is for a new board status to be submitted (and any bugs fixed)?

If it is so urgent, why don't you submit a report instead of phrasing
your email in a panic-like and accusatory manner?

[e-mail]:
> This is a great board that many use and it DOES work - it needs a status
> update ASAP to prevent it from being removed in the next release.
>
> I am unable to do this myself as I use mine for an important router.
>
> At the rate things are going soon there will be no non-development
> boards that are still in the repos due to the arbitrary increasing of
> standards.

[awokd]

On Thu, April 26, 2018 11:13 pm, Duncan wrote:
> How urgent is "urgent" given that the board remains in git, and all it
> takes is for a new board status to be submitted (and any bugs fixed)?
>
> If it is so urgent, why don't you submit a report instead of phrasing
> your email in a panic-like and accusatory manner?
>
> [e-mail]:
> > This is a great board that many use and it DOES work - it needs a
> > status update ASAP to prevent it from being removed in the next release.
> >
> > I am unable to do this myself as I use mine for an important router.
> >
> > At the rate things are going soon there will be no non-development
> > boards that are still in the repos due to the arbitrary increasing of
> > standards.

Just as a point of order, Taiidan's email here was originally sent Apr. 4.
A board report was uploaded a few days ago so it is no longer a pressing
concern, but as others have noted, it's good to keep active boards active
in the database too with board reports!

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

Hi,

On Wed, 4 Apr 2018 18:36:56 -0400
"[e-mail]"  wrote:
> This is a great board that many use and it DOES work - it needs a
> status update ASAP to prevent it from being removed in the next
> release.

Is there more details on the policy? For instance how can I know in
advance which of the board I have are affected? Does it applies to the
boards in yellow in the Supported Motherboards[1] page? What is the
deadline?
I have the following 'yellow' 'boards', and I'm interested in
refreshing them. However I cannot do it before the beginning of next
week:
- M4A785T-M: last status: October 2015
- T400: Last status: Aug 2017

I also have a beagle bone green, but I'm not sure it's compatible.

References:
-----------
[1]https://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards

Denis.