On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Peter Dennis - Sustaining Engineer <Peter.Dennis at sun.com> wrote: > A simple +1 from me. > > Garrett D'Amore wrote: >> >> Now that Sun has made official moves to de-support certain hardware (and >> to be fair this is not new ... for example some people have wanted >> UltraSPARC 1 support for a while now, but now it will be expanded to all >> SPARC workstations other than U25 and U45), it seems like it might be a good >> idea if we had a "community supported hardware" group and perhaps a >> dedicated code base. >> >> What I'm thinking of is: >> >> 1) a new consolidation >> >> ? * call it CSHW (community supported hardware) for now (other names?) >> ? * (structured somewhat like ON, but probably considerably simpler) >> ? * containing platform support and drivers not in ON >> ? * drivers might also include userland components (X11 modules?) >> >> 2) the consolidation would be built "in parallel" to ON >> >> ? * compile against ?a checked out copy of the ON source base at the same >> time. >> ? * then build 150 of CSHW would also be built against build 150 of ON >> ? * (and possibly other consolidations such as X?) >> ? * binary ?distro would only be "correct" if it made up of matching >> components >> ? * don't duplicate what is in ON -- this isn't a "fork", its an extension >> of ON. >> ? * will probably use a much simpler Makefile system without ON's >> limitations >> ? * I will offer to set up the initial repo for it. >> >> 3) Sun would have no official support for this new consolidation. >> >> ? * no support in bugster for this stuff >> ? * not part of any official Sun distro >> ? * caveat emptor >> >> 4) The "C-Team" for it would be made up of people from the community >> >> ? * might or might not be Sun employees (have some thoughts here) >> ? * majority non-Sun kernel contributors >> ? * would be Core contributors >> ? * if you want to be on this list, let me know >> ? * volunteer gatekeeper and backup gatekeeper >> ? * use OpenSolaris public systems for doing builds >> ? * builds should not be very resource intensive -- there isn't that much >> that has to be compiled >> >> 5) Initial things I'd think of integrating into it: >> >> ? * the Tadpole SPARCLE support I recently yanked from ON >> ? * restored SDcard functionality for SPARC (by simply compiling the ON >> bits) >> ? * drivers for audiocs4281, and perhaps other less popular audio hardware >> ? * perhaps "alternative" drivers for LSI "mfi" and "ce" hardware from >> community authors >> ? * stp4020 driver (after removal from ON) >> ? * bpp driver (after removal from ON) >> ? * other legacy PCMCIA drivers (pcram/pcmem ?!?) >> ? * platmod support for SPARC workstations as they are removed from ON >> ? * support for Ultra-1 systems from Rainer >> ? * perhaps a revived le driver ported from NetBSD? >> ? * perhaps other "architecture ports" ?? This might be trickier than you >> think! >> >> 6) Rules for integration would be far, far looser than ON: >> >> ? * code has to compile >> ? * you have to assert that you have tested it >> ? * no long term support commitment required >> ? * no webrti, instead just an e-mail based review/approval for now >> ? * (what do other consolidations use for rti approval?) >> ? * code review still required >> ? * include documentation (man page) as part of integration >> ? * no ARC approval required >> ? * can import ON Consolidation Private interfaces >> ? * no duplicates of stuff in ON or other consolidations without >> justification >> ? * sign-off by one of the Core Contributors >> >> 7) Obviously this would require a new Community Group inside OpenSolaris >> >> ? * three core contributors needed (need to identify two more besides me) >> ? * mailing lists and webpages on opensolaris.org >> ? * code hosted in mercurial on hg.opensolaris.org >> ? * possibly separate defects.os.o category? ?not sure. >> >> I'm willing to start the process on this - including setting up an initial >> consolidation -- if there is enough other community interest. ?I need at >> least two other folks who are willing to act as CC's though. ?My first >> nominations on this would be Juergen Keil, Rainer Orth, Steve Stallion, and >> Jason King. ?Of course, I've not really verified any of this with them yet; >> I'm happy to take other suggestions or volunteers. >> >> Note that I'm also willing to volunteer as the initial gatekeeper on this, >> performing builds, etc. >> >> If I hear the necessary support from the community-at-large and receive >> confirmation of willingness to volunteer from appropriate CC's, then I'll go >> ahead and start the process. >> >> ? - Garrett
+100 (as I already wrote last morning) not sure, why you forgot me, i also did a bit to keep legacy sparc alive (xorg community drivers) -- %martin
