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Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 13:59:01 -0800
From: "Martin J. Bligh" <Martin.Bligh@us.ibm.com>
To: Dave Jones <davej@suse.de>, Patricia Gaughen <gone@us.ibm.com>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, lse-tech@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Lse-tech] Re: [RFC] modularization of i386 setup_arch and mem_init in 2.4.18
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>  As a sidenote (sort of related topic) :
>  An idea being kicked around a little right now is x86 subarch
>  support for 2.5. With so many of the niche x86 spin-offs appearing
>  lately, all fighting for their own piece of various files in
>  arch/i386/kernel/, it may be time to do the same as the ARM folks did,
>  and have..
> 
>   arch/i386/generic/
>   arch/i386/numaq/
>   arch/i386/visws
>   arch/i386/voyager/
>   etc..
> 
>  I've been meaning to find some time to move the necessary bits around,
>  and jiggle configs to see how it would work out, but with a pending
>  house move, I haven't got around to it yet.. Maybe next week.

I'm willing to help you out with this if you like (especially as I caused
some of the current ifdefs ;-)).
 
>  The downsides to this:
>  - Code duplication.
>    Some routines will likely be very similar if not identical.
>  - Bug propagation.
>    If something is fixed in one subarch, theres a high possibility
>    it needs fixing in other subarchs

The above are what I'm really afraid of. I think the best way to avoid 
most of the downside is to split up some of the current monster functions 
(like setup_arch) into generic and platform-specific parts ... exactly as 
Pat's patch does.

It would be nice to see a "blessing in principle" from Marcelo and
Linus before we / you start spending lots of time on this.

M.

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