Linux Plumbers Conference 2020

Linux RISC-V Kernel Policy for Draft Specs

26 Aug 2020, 10:00

30m

Microconference3/Virtual-Room (LPC Virtual)

RISC-V MC RISC-V MC

Speaker

Alistair Francis

Description

The Linux RISC-V Kernel has adopted a policy to accept patches only for frozen/ratified RISC-V specs. This was done to align with RISC-V spec development process of the RISC-V Foundation and avoid maintenance burden. Considering the time taken by RISC-V spec development process, is there a better policy which Linux RISC-V Kernel can adopt ??

Projects such as QEMU RISC-V and OpenSBI have been accepting patches for draft specs without any issues. The policy adopted by these projects is as follows:
1) Features/functionality pertaining to draft spec will not be enabled by default
2) Backward-compatibility will not be maintained for features/functionality pertaining to draft spec

This talk is a place-holder for discussing above described Linux RISC-V Kernel Policy on draft specs.