Proposal for reorg of kernel directory

[Becky Bruce]

On Jun 21, 2005, at 7:31 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

>
>> To prevent bloating the kernel directory, I'd like to propose a
>> reorganization of the ppc64 tree to look more like the ppc tree.
>> This includes the creation of  "platforms" and "syslib" directories
>> that would contain platform-specific code and non-platform-specific
>> system code, respectively.
>
> I'm not fan at all of kernel vs. syslib. Even on ppc32, and years after
> the split, I still keep trying to get at files in the wrong directory 
> ;)

I can't really say I'm a huge fan, either - I had to get Kumar to  
explain to me the purpose of syslib.  However, looking at the 32-bit 
side, there are quite a few files over there that would make the kernel 
directory rather large if they were in one directory.  I think the idea 
behind that organization was to have:
	- "kernel" dir - ppc generic kernel code and processor-specific code
	- "platforms" dir - platform-specific code
	-  "syslib" - all device/system-level kernel code that is not 
platform-specific.

That said, I don't think the line between the 3 can be drawn perfectly 
in practice, hence the confusion we have about where to find files.  I 
think there's some merit in having the 3 directories, but if the 
concensus of this group is that we only separate out the platform code, 
that works for me.

>
> platforms is ok.

OK, so let's talk about how the organization of platforms would look if 
we go with the split.   As I see it, there are several options:

1.  Slam all of the platform-specific files into a flat "platforms" 
directory.
2.  Do something similar to the 32-bit tree's implementation of the 
platforms dir, where single-platform code is at the highest level in 
"platforms".  Create subdirectories for platforms which are very 
similar and share most of their code - I believe this ties in with 
Arnd's idea about more generic platforms.
3.  Subdirs for each platform under the platforms directory.  I don't 
really like this one, but it is an option.

With 1 and 2 also comes the issue of file naming - files that are truly 
platform-specific should probably have the file name prefixed with the 
platform name.  I believe this is mostly true today.

Thoughts?
Becky