[OpenPower-Firmware] Dropping Power8 in op-build

[Stewart Smith]

> On Jun 17, 2020, at 4:54 AM, Klaus Heinrich Kiwi <klaus at linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 6/17/2020 4:58 AM, Joel Stanley wrote:
>>> On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 05:38, Paul Menzel
>>> <pmenzel+openpower-firmware at molgen.mpg.de> wrote:
>>> It looks like they are held up due to failing in IBM internal build
>>> environment. Can that internal environment be integrated into the public
>>> CI infrastructure?
>> If the reason we can't merge is internal CI fails to build, won't that
>> same internal CI fail to build if we remove Power8 from the tree and
>> update to the newer compilers?
> 
> I think Dean and Dan can better comment on this, but my take is that the Hostboot team
> (as well as SBE, OCC etc) have a Power8 branch, on which we based several of our products,
> and they're maintaining that branch as those products still require them. Since those are
> long-term products in "fixes" mode only, they'd prefer not to change the toolchain
> from underneath it, adding risk to existing products using them and essentially having
> to re-validate all of them end-to-end.

That should have nothing to do with upstream master though.

I’d also note that the try-cflag patch that Joel proposed (a cherry pick of my four year old patch) would solve this problem anyway.

>> I can't see the downside to merging these patches in. There's no
>> guarantee of support or testing, but it allows folks like Paul to
>> still build from master, and take advantage of updates to skiboot,
>> buildroot and Linux.
> 
> 
> I believe it would require the HB, OCC, SBE teams etc to perform "a branch of a branch",
> i.e., continue to maintain the branch in which we have products still in service,
> while creating a new branch, that sits somewhere in between "hostboot-p8" and
> "hostboot-master", that is able to drive the Power8 chip while still tolerating newer
> compilers and toolchains (and new features?).

Hostboot master is wildly different from Hostboot master-p8.

We’re talking a dozen patches here.

I’d almost encourage the community just to maintain branches ourselves, it’d be less work. IBM can pull if it wants, but perhaps it’s time to just have open power branches.

I also wonder if this pattern is about to be repeated with P9, as it has a much larger installed base out in a broader community what with the availability of the Raptor boxes.