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Subject: [PATCH 2/4] Documentation: RISC-V: Allow patches for non-standard behavior
Date:   Wed, 12 Oct 2022 21:56:17 -0700
Message-Id: <20221013045619.18906-3-palmer@rivosinc.com>
In-Reply-To: <20221013045619.18906-1-palmer@rivosinc.com>
References: <20221013045619.18906-1-palmer@rivosinc.com>
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Cc:     corbet@lwn.net, Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@sifive.com>,
        Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com>, aou@eecs.berkeley.edu,
        conor.dooley@microchip.com, Atish Patra <atishp@rivosinc.com>,
        linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux@rivosinc.com,
        Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>
From:   Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>
To:     Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org>, Atish Patra <atishp@rivosinc.com>
Precedence: bulk

From: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>

The patch acceptance policy forbids accepting support for non-standard
behavior.  This policy was written in order to both steer implementers
towards the standards and to avoid coupling the upstream kernel too
tightly to vendor-specific features.  Those were good goals, but in
practice the policy just isn't working: every RISC-V system we have
needs vendor-specific behavior in the kernel and we end up taking that
support which violates the policy.  That's confusing for contributors,
which is the main reason we have a written policy in the first place.

So let's just start taking code for vendor-defined behavior.

Reviewed-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
Signed-off-by: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>
---
 Documentation/riscv/patch-acceptance.rst | 13 +++++++++----
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/riscv/patch-acceptance.rst b/Documentation/riscv/patch-acceptance.rst
index 5da6f9b273d6..0a6199233ede 100644
--- a/Documentation/riscv/patch-acceptance.rst
+++ b/Documentation/riscv/patch-acceptance.rst
@@ -29,7 +29,12 @@ their own custom extensions.  These custom extensions aren't required
 to go through any review or ratification process by the RISC-V
 Foundation.  To avoid the maintenance complexity and potential
 performance impact of adding kernel code for implementor-specific
-RISC-V extensions, we'll only accept patches for extensions that
-have been officially frozen or ratified by the RISC-V Foundation.
-(Implementors, may, of course, maintain their own Linux kernel trees
-containing code for any custom extensions that they wish.)
+RISC-V extensions, we'll only accept patches for extensions that either:
+
+- Have been officially frozen or ratified by the RISC-V Foundation, or
+- Have been implemented in hardware that is either widely available or
+  for which a timeline for availability has been made public.
+
+Hardware that does not meet its published timelines may have support
+removed.  (Implementors, may, of course, maintain their own Linux kernel
+trees containing code for any custom extensions that they wish.)
-- 
2.38.0