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Sender: Michael@michaelkloos.com
Message-ID: <b10e777c-1511-519b-20bb-a682a6119132@MichaelKloos.com>
Date:   Thu, 10 Mar 2022 08:37:27 -0500
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] riscv: Work to remove kernel dependence on the
 M-extension
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From:   "Michael T. Kloos" <Michael@MichaelKloos.com>
To:     Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc:     Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@sifive.com>, aou@eecs.berkeley.edu,
        linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <mhng-08a28047-b563-41f4-b705-f27b88554f2c@palmer-mbp2014>
 <8f06a08e-c1b3-066f-bd9e-1f2d686492fa@MichaelKloos.com>
 <3db8c258-cc62-29d1-c64f-31f3c4e2aa07@MichaelKloos.com>
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Is there something I can do that would help alleviate your concerns or
apprehension?

On 3/10/2022 8:22 AM, Michael T. Kloos wrote:

> Some other thoughts:
> It sounds like I am not the first person to want this feature and I
> probably won't be the last.  I created the change for my own reasons, the
> same as any other contributor.  I think we all know that I can not pull
> out some chart and say, "This many people want this and here is why."  I
> live in central Ohio and have been doing this as a hobby.  I don't even
> know anyone else who knows about systems and operating system development.
> If the justification that you are looking for is that I as some
> hypothetical developer at a major tech company is about to release a new
> RISC-V chip without M support but we want it to run Linux, I can not
> provide that answer.  It sounds a bit like some software or hardware,
> chicken or the egg anyway.  Trying to maintain my own fork if people
> start contributing patches with incompatible assembly scares me.
>      Michael