Hi Mathias,
On 05.12.2018 09:56, Mathias Kresin wrote:
Hey all,
I would like to start to reject patches for adding boards with only 32
MByte of RAM and 4 MByte of flash [0]. These boards barely work with
todays OpenWrt default builds and require quite some modifications to be
useful at all [1].
In general I agree but I still consider OpenWrt more like a platform
than a ready Linux distribution. For me this means that even if snapshot
or release images are missing for some devices because of their limited
resources, thanks to keeping basic support for them in code base, users
are still able to make use of them. There are already devices in repo
which didn't get official image for 18.06 release but now have snapshot
images and can be even more useful with a custom/self made image.
IMHO it doesn't make much sense to waste resources (reviewer time, build
resources) for boards which will most likely never see an official build
and/or are more or less unusable with the official build.
In case of DTS based targets (where single device support in code
doesn't have that big impact like in, for example, ar71xx) and good
quality patch/PR I don't see a reason to not merge the support. And in
case the official snapshot/release build can't fit in available flash
space and we are really worried about build resources, we can just
disable image generation for the device. This way, users and downstream
projects would be still able to make use of OpenWrt on resource-limited
devices without the need to maintain custom device support patches.
I prefer to have a joint statement which I can link to, to prevent
endless discussions or accusations of acting purely arbitrary.
Instead of making this a strict rule now I would prefer to leave final
decision to the developer who takes care of patch/PR _and_ establish a
clear dead line for this to become a strict rule. Lets say: after 19.06
release we no longer accept support patches for devices with only 4 MB
of flash or 32 MB of RAM.
I'm not sure whether the topic qualifies for a formal voting, hence the RFC.
Thanks for bringing up this topic.
--
Cheers,
Piotr
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