Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#2(2021)
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#3two years passed, not sure if it's doing upstream-first in real yet.
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#4Here's the up to date documentation
https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/gen...
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#5[deleted]
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#6Reading that again today in the context of "Linux gives up on 6-year LTS kernels, says they’re too much work", Android could have been a prime helper of LTS kernel maintenance.
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#7two years passed, not sure if it's doing upstream-first in real yet.
I doubt it, as Android has many subsystems not available upstream.
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#8Reading that again today in the context of "Linux gives up on 6-year LTS kernels, says they’re too much work", Android could have been a prime helper of LTS kernel maintenance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591050
Android was the prime helper of LTS kernel maintenance. They're the entire reason that LTS kernels even exist!
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/jiky5j/linux_510_is_...
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#9Can anyone who has actual experience in Linux kernel development for ARM platforms offer a realistic defense of the status quo other than "companies making the SoCs don't care nor do the device OEMs that are their primary customers and it would cost more to do it right"?
I'm not a low level hardware person, but being on the edges of the Android modding community for over a decade now and also spending a lot of time working on the various Pi-likes has left me incredibly frustrated with the state of hardware support.
In my mind it is absolutely inexcusable that vendors regularly ship hardware with only binary blob support for ancient kernels, years old versions of Android, etc. with no intent to ever change. To me that's a sign of either pure incompetence or an active desire to do things wrongly. Am I wrong? Is there any reason I shouldn't feel like everyone responsible for those choices should be named and shamed constantly? Basically is there any good excuse other than "it's cheaper this way" and/or defective logic about drivers being "trade secrets" of some form.
Re: Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel (2021)
#10Can anyone who has actual experience in Linux kernel development for ARM platforms offer a realistic defense of the status quo other than "companies making the SoCs don't care nor do the device OEMs that are their primary customers and it would cost more to do it right"? I'm not a low level hardware person, but being on the edges of the Android modding community for over a decade now and also spending a lot of time w…
I think I'm several years out of date on this issue, but years ago one of the problems was that there were not standard hardware interfaces for things a kernel needs like interrupt routing or hardware bus enumeration. The PC for example is a very homogeneous platform. There are also standards like EFI. But the ARM world has been a wild west. Each device needed some kind of hardcoded hardware map.