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Date:   Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:24:04 +0200
From:   Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@gmail.com>
To:     Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch>
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Andy Shevchenko <andy@kernel.org>, linux-fbdev@vger.kernel.org,
        Michael Hennerich <michael.hennerich@analog.com>,
        Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>, linux-staging@lists.linux.dev,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org,
        Phillip Potter <phil@philpotter.co.uk>,
        Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>,
        Carlis <zhangxuezhi1@yulong.com>,
        Lee Jones <lee.jones@linaro.org>,
        Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1 0/4] fbtft: Unorphan the driver for maintenance
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On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 11:52:16AM +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 11:47 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 12:02:36PM +0200, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 10:52 AM Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de> wrote:
> > > > Am 25.01.22 um 21:21 schrieb Andy Shevchenko:

> > > > > Since we got a maintainer for fbdev, I would like to
> > > > > unorphan fbtft (with the idea of sending PRs to Helge)
> > > > > and move it out of staging since there is no more clean
> > > > > up work expected and no more drivers either.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thoughts?
> > >
> > > Thanks for sharing yours, my answers below.
> > >
> > > > But why? We already have DRM drivers for some of these devices.
> > >
> > > No, we do not (only a few are available).
> > >
> > > > Porting
> > > > the others to DRM is such a better long-term plan.  OTOH, as no one has
> > > > shown up and converted them, maybe they should be left dead or removed
> > > > entirely.
> > >
> > > As I mentioned above there are devices that nobody will take time to
> > > port to a way too complex DRM subsystem. But the devices are cheap and
> > > quite widespread in the embedded world. I'm in possession of 3 or 4
> > > different models and only 1 is supported by tiny DRM.
> >
> > Great, then let's just move the 2 models that you do not have support
> > for in DRM, not the whole lot.  When we have real users for the drivers,
> > we can move them out of staging, but until then, dragging all of them
> > out does not make sense.
> 
> Can't we create drm drivers for these 2-3 models? Like we have drivers
> which are below 300 lines with all the helpers taking care of
> everything, this shouldn't be too tricky.

For a few years there is no news about it. Okay, in this thread Noralf
revealed a new idea to replace pile of the drivers in FBTFT.

> And if no one cares enough for that, then imo let's just keep this in
> staging and let it quietly&slowly pass away. At least from the people
> who've been active in any kind of display development the past 6+
> years (which is roughly when Tomi abandoned fbdev as last active
> maintainer) the consensus _is_ that drm drivers are simpler, quicker
> to type (once you got hold of the subsystem and all its helpers at
> least), and adding new fbdev drivers just makes no sense at all.

-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko