[coreboot] [PATCH] [3/7] Roda RK886EX support: SMSC LPC47N227

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 18.01.2010 00:57, ron minnich wrote:
> I think for chip support forking the support software may look bad
> from a "software engineering" point of view, but is at times the only
> practical option because (to be as polite as possible) the
> implementation of many of these chips is not that great.
>   

While this may be true for coreboot, this method caused huge pains in
flashrom because people didn't even read the code before they
copied/modified it. The worst cases were 100% copy-paste jobs where only
a search/replace of the function names had been done. Over time, some of
the copied files got modified and others stayed the same. A sizable
chunk of old drivers contradict the datasheets because people forgot to
actually adapt the driver to the chip after copying. Fortunately, a
detailed analysis of code vs. datasheets allowed us to overcome the
duplication and now ~80% of the old chip drivers can be killed thanks to
the improved infrastructure.

I do recognize that coreboot support for a chipset is way harder to
write and check than flashrom support for flash chips and agree that
"looks safe" changes to unified multi-chipset code in coreboot can be a
huge source of bugs.

What strikes me as odd is the fact that many chipset files in the
coreboot source tree just got a search/replace treatment from another
chipset, even if some feature is not even present on the new chipset.
Would a dedicated "template" chipset directory help people implementing
support for completely new chipsets?

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
Developer quote of the year:
"We are juggling too many chainsaws and flaming arrows and tigers."