Subject: Re: PowerPC BOF at Ottawa Linux Symposium July 19

From: Dan Malek <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 15:29:20 -0400

Cort Dougan wrote:
>
> I won't be in Ottawa but I have a suggestion for something to talk about
> there if anyone would be interested in it.  Could you have a brainstorming
> session about how to re-structure the chip/architecture portions of
> arch/ppc/?

I don't know if I will be there, but I would like to make a comment
on this as well.  The BOF started as a workstation/server discussion,
and the chip/architecture issues are really the result of the variety
of embedded PowerPC processors and boards.

There is PREP/CHRP/PowerMac that you have successfully combined, with
minor configuration differences among all of them.  Then we have lots
of different PowerPC cores with highly integrated functional units on
a variety of different board configurations.  I think we are fortunate
to be able to provide this wide range of solutions, but it does present
the source code structure challenge as Cort (and others) have discussed.

As a workstation/server BOF, I don't know how much interest exists to
discuss this.  The easy answer is a set of orthogonal directory trees,
but I think the highest priority should be on maintaining a set of
common files.  Having experienced splitting some processor dependent
files, I would still take the #ifdefs over tracking similar changes
across multiple files.

	-- Dan

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