Merge tag 'arch-removal' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/arnd/asm-generic
Pul removal of obsolete architecture ports from Arnd Bergmann:
"This removes the entire architecture code for blackfin, cris, frv,
m32r, metag, mn10300, score, and tile, including the associated device
drivers.
I have been working with the (former) maintainers for each one to
ensure that my interpretation was right and the code is definitely
unused in mainline kernels. Many had fond memories of working on the
respective ports to start with and getting them included in upstream,
but also saw no point in keeping the port alive without any users.
In the end, it seems that while the eight architectures are extremely
different, they all suffered the same fate: There was one company in
charge of an SoC line, a CPU microarchitecture and a software
ecosystem, which was more costly than licensing newer off-the-shelf
CPU cores from a third party (typically ARM, MIPS, or RISC-V). It
seems that all the SoC product lines are still around, but have not
used the custom CPU architectures for several years at this point. In
contrast, CPU instruction sets that remain popular and have actively
maintained kernel ports tend to all be used across multiple licensees.
[ See the new nds32 port merged in the previous commit for the next
generation of "one company in charge of an SoC line, a CPU
microarchitecture and a software ecosystem" - Linus ]
The removal came out of a discussion that is now documented at
https://lwn.net/Articles/748074/. Unlike the original plans, I'm not
marking any ports as deprecated but remove them all at once after I
made sure that they are all unused. Some architectures (notably tile,
mn10300, and blackfin) are still being shipped in products with old
kernels, but those products will never be updated to newer kernel
releases.
After this series, we still have a few architectures without mainline
gcc support:
- unicore32 and hexagon both have very outdated gcc releases, but the
maintainers promised to work on providing something newer. At least
in case of hexagon, this will only be llvm, not gcc.
- openrisc, risc-v and nds32 are still in the process of finishing
their support or getting it added to mainline gcc in the first
place. They all have patched gcc-7.3 ports that work to some
degree, but complete upstream support won't happen before gcc-8.1.
Csky posted their first kernel patch set last week, their situation
will be similar
[ Palmer Dabbelt points out that RISC-V support is in mainline gcc
since gcc-7, although gcc-7.3.0 is the recommended minimum - Linus ]"
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