Re: [linuxsh-dev] Patch: Boot time configuration of SCI(F) and Overdrive support

[Stuart M. <Stu...@st...>]

Folks

I'm glad my SCI patch caused some discussions!

Unfortunately as Pierre-Philippe as not working with SuperH any more,
I'm reluctant to checkin the board specific changes he made, as nobody
will be able to test them. However the 7707 changes looked worth
having.  If I try and incorporate then, is there anyone out there who
could test them?

So I'll go ahead and check in my changes when I'm next back in work
(which will be Tuesday now) unless I hear any different.

>> Alternatively, Pierre, could you put a new version of your patch
>> on SourceForge please?  Here's the URL:

Mitch, thanks for doing this. I couldn't see a way of getting a
plain text version out of the mailing list archive.

>> Stuart, at m17n we discussed public discussion of patches, so
>> hope you don't mind my comments.

Not at all, its good to get some feedback.

>> One thing which occurs to me is that the Alpha people have
>> this problem, but even more so.  That is, dozens and dozens
>> of different boards, each with different CPUs and slightly
>> different peripherals.  It might be worth having a look at
>> how they've done things to see if there are ideas worth 
>> stealing.

I agree. My feeling is that the SuperH port of Linux will probably be the
first which is targeted at embedded systems from the outset, so it
would be good to try and get the support for large number of variants
right at the start. We also want to try and make it as simple as possible
for users to add support for custom hardware.

I'll try and have a look at some of the other ports in the next few
days and make some proposals for how we could proceed. My colleague is
adding PCI support for the Overdrive here at the moment, so the number
of board specific files has mushroomed. So this is an issue we have a
direct interest in solving!

>> Just out of curiosity, what did sci_setsignals do?

In the current version, nothing. The comment says that it is there to
handle modem control lines, but nothing has been implemented, so
commenting it out has no effect. I guess we will need something for
the future, but that is going to be another bit of board specific
code.

Actually you've found me out, this was a bit of a hack to get things
going!  My only defence is that I've started making more changes to
these files to add support for multiple SCI and SCIF ports, so I'll
keep it there for the moment until someone needs to do something real
with it.

>> Just a general note to people doing work while in the employ
>> of companies: To protect yourself, your employer and the Linux
>> kernel, it might be a good idea to get something signed to say
>> that your company doesn't regard the code as its intellectual
>> property.  Saying it's licensed under the GPL can't hurt either.

Good point. I've started making enquiries about this at ST.  Mitch, I
thing you mentioned that you'd had to do something similar. Did you
find the few lines at the end of the GPL sufficient:

  Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
  `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

  <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
  Ty Coon, President of Vice

I have a nasty feeling I'm going to need something more to keep the
lawyers happy, and management won't sign until they are.

Stuart