[meta-ti] RFC: creating "extras" layer

[Jason Kridner]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Steffen Sledz <sledz at dresearch-fe.de> wrote:
> On 13.06.2012 16:15, Enrico wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 3:17 AM, Denys Dmytriyenko <denis at denix.org> wrote:
>>> ....
>>> with the possibility of moving them back to "main" meta-ti in the
>>> future, once they become "first-class citizens", i.e. gain current and
>>> continuing support.
>>
>> What's the official TI plan for this? I mean:
>>
>> - what platforms is TI going to support? what platforms is TI going to
>> keep current?

BeagleBoard-xM and BeagleBone have support in the TI Linux SDK, are
getting patches applied in the mainline Linux kernel by TI developers
and will continue to be refreshed.  I'm sure other TI platforms may be
supported and given refreshes, but I'm only aware of the
BeagleBoard-related activities.

>>
>> - are there any plans to keep support for the dsp-related things?

The staffing on this is minimal, but there will be some refreshes in
the future.  Investment continues and can be clearly noted with things
like the availability of linux on C6000 in the mainline kernel now,
along with the requisite C6000 support in GCC.  I have some activities
planned for later this year to improve the DSP and M3/PRU
communications, but there are some more urgent issues to fix in the
mainline kernel relative to the processors on BeagleBoard,
BeagleBoard-xM and BeagleBone currently.

>>
>> I imported and fixed the dsp-related things from oe-classic, and Koen
>> was the only one that helped me.

Koen has been sponsored by TI in the past.

>>
>> I posted some patches for gst-ducati for omap4, with help from Koen
>> and Rob Clark, and nobody cared.

Rob Clark is a TI employee.  I appreciate your contributions.

>>
>> I know the concept of "opensource" and "community" but  it seems to me
>> that TI has no interest in all of this, just look at the current
>> platform support after the extras split.

Can we please stick to discussing where we can help, rather than
motivation?  I'm 100% confident that there is interest at TI for
supporting open source and community developers.  It isn't always at
the level I'd like, but it continues to grow overall and I think we
are being very open in this process.

>>
>> The point is that you will not stop people complaining (like Steffen
>> some days ago) just saying: "oh it's in extras you are lucky if it
>> builds".
>>
>> So the question is: are there any plans in TI to properly support its
>> platforms or will this continue to be a place where to drop some code,
>> forget about it and then move it to an extra layer?
>
> It's really a great pity that there is no (official) response from TI to this . :(

TI has official support for BeagleBoard-xM and BeagleBone in Arago
(currently based on OE Classic).  I feel, however, that we aren't
doing enough to collaborate with community developers on these vendor
kernels/BSPs, though we are starting to catch our stride on upstream
contributions (TI is now the #2 semiconductor contributor to the Linux
kernel per [1]).

Work will start in earnest in the next month to move this support to
meta-ti.  The current proposal seems to be an attempt to clear-up
responsibility and organization ahead of that effort.

[1] http://www.remword.com/kps_result/3.4_whole.html

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