Fwd: Merging ppc32 and ppc64

[Kumar Gala]

FYI.  For those not subscribed to linuxppc-dev or linuxppc64-dev.

- kumar

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Paul Mackerras" <paulus at samba.org>
> Date: August 2, 2005 10:07:34 PM CDT
> To: <linuxppc-dev at ozlabs.org>, <linuxppc64-dev at ozlabs.org>
> Subject: Merging ppc32 and ppc64
>
>
> At OLS I discussed the idea of merging the ppc32 and ppc64
> architectures in the Linux kernel with various ppc32 and ppc64 kernel
> hackers and users.  There was broad agreement that this would be a
> good thing to do, so we are going to go ahead and do it.
>
> The plan is to create include/asm-powerpc and arch/powerpc directories
> for the merged architecture and move stuff in there as it gets
> merged.  The existing ppc32 and ppc64 directories will stay around
> until they are no longer useful.  The intention is not to break
> anything that currently works; however, we do not plan to move unused
> and unmaintained platforms into the merged architecture.
>
> The advantage of merging is that it will reduce the maintenance effort
> and reduce the instances where a common bug gets fixed in one
> architecture but not the other.  It will also make it easier to
> support 64-bit embedded systems as they become more common.
>
> I don't see the merge as changing the actual code that gets executed
> on any given platform very much, except in one respect: we are going
> to standardize on a flattened device tree as the way that information
> about the platform gets passed from the boot loader to the kernel.
>
> Comments? Flames? :)
>
> Paul.
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