Am Sonntag, 6. Dezember 2020, 13:59:52 CET schrieb Adrian Schmutzler: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: openwrt-devel [mailto:openwrt-devel-boun...@lists.openwrt.org] > > On Behalf Of Sven Roederer > > Sent: Sonntag, 6. Dezember 2020 02:07 > > To: openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org > > Subject: [RFC 0/5] ath79: add a lower RAM-using version of 8/32 devices > > > > Currently 8MB flash / 32MB RAM devices are fully supported in OpenWrt, as > > they work quite well for basic usage (including full LuCI). > > On some projects with advanced features (e.g. Freifunk) the lack of RAM > > turns them into unstable devices. Mostly caused by several OOM problems > > per day. > > This series tries to prolong the usage of these boards by moving them to > > the ath79-tiny target. Indeed it makes these boards available on > > ath79-tiny in addition to the current ath79-generic variant. > > To improve the low RAM situation the default kernel-config for the tiny > > sub- target will also disable some uncommon features. So the kernel image > > becomes smaller, which results in lower flash- and RAM-footprint. > > As stated in the earlier discussion, I never liked mixing low-flash ("tiny") > and low-RAM (???) devices. > > In contrast, David has made clear that this also is not possible due to > conflicting goals for both approaches. > > So, rather than mixing things up here and making it even harder to > understand what "tiny" is supposed to be, this proposal IMO should rather > aim at introducing a new subtarget aiming specifically at low-RAM devices. > One could then just stop building "tiny" by default (there is only one > device left, and I doubt people will have much benefit from prebuilt > packages when they have to strip stuff anyway), and build the new subtarget > _instead_ (i.e. no additional building overhead). >
I agree, that some of the "small_flash" defaults are probably not the optimal choice for 8MB-flash devices. A new subtarget might be an option, but is it really worth to define a new one for "deprecated" boards? Esp. as it's to be expected that both will vanish in the release following 20.xx. A new subtarget feels to me like just adding additional maintenance and additional confusion to the users. Adrian, as you mentioned there is currently only one board build for ath79- tiny at all. So it's a target that might not be interesting for the average user at all. For this it might be a good idea to stop now building this target anyway in favor of using the build ressouces more effectively. Getting more images for the tiny-subtarget will only change when customizing the config . By writing this I wonder if it gives sense to add a new subtarget "deprecated" (to all relevant targets) to include all boards that might fall out of support "soon" as of limited ressources? This will be a clear statement to the users and even easy to determ, when a board belonge to this subtarget. As we currently see "tiny" was introduced for the 4/32MB boards but in the meanwhile should include the 8/32MB boards, too. In the "next wave" I assume 8/64MB boards will belong to this category in some years. Very likely the 4/32 and 8/32 boards have become unsupportable then anyway and removed from the code- basis. I also ran a quick check on the usage of the "small_flash" and "low_mem" flag features. They are defined for some targets and used to set the "SMALL_FLASH" and "LOW_MEMORY_FOOTPRINT" config-features. But there seems no other use of them, or did I miss something? If I'm right, the most difference between generic and tiny is the "config-default" file. When there is no further use of the features, it's nor probably an option to think of combining both into something like "low_ressources". Based on this some default config-choices can be changed, like "optimize for size", disabling some "comfort features". As said before, a smaller binary / kernel will save flash-space and RAM-space, even the flash-space might not be relevant for all "low_ressources" boards. Sven _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel