CE Workgroup Project Selection


Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...>
 

I am pleased to announce the projects to be sponsored by the CE Workgroup
for the next year. In September, the CEWG had an open project proposal
period, where we solicited project ideas from the community and from workgroup
members. In October, at our Architecture Group meeting, we did a technical
review of these proposals, and recently the Steering Committee
voted on the projects to sponsor in the coming year.

Here is the list of projects that the CE working group decided to fund:

1. Setup LTSI testing/validation infrastructure
2. CPU Shielding capability
3. Device-tree documentation
4. Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
5. Android boot time improvements
6. Compressed printk messages
7. Add support for CONFIG_NUMA to ARM
8. More robust UBIFS support

You can see details about these project by following the links at:
http://elinux.org/CEWG_Open_Project_Proposal_2013#Selected_Projects

The CE Workgroup decided not to fund the following other projects.

Improve UBI user space tools
Implement scatter-gather lists support in UBI and UBIFS
Support dumping user-space stack from kernel
Kernel module binary compatibility with debug features
Improve devm_* and get rid of boilerplate code
Mainline synaptics touchscreen driver
Add device-tree support to pn544 NFC driver
Fix IRQ Domain DT support issues and gpio IRQ
Generic upgrade infrastructure for embedded systems
Support asymetric RSA in Crypto API

Proposers and others have expressed interest in learning
about the reasons why some of these were not selected.

Here are some very brief notes about the reasons for not
supporting a particular project:

==
Improve UBI user space tools
Implement scatter-gather lists support in UBI and UBIFS

Most CE companies are moving away from raw NAND towards eMMC for
CE products. So UBIFS-related projects were not favored. One
UBIFS project, dealing with robustness, however, was selected.

Also, we had no bids for these projects. In the case of
the scatter-gather list proposal, the main feature seemed to
be to reduce memory utilization of UBIFS. No member companies
seemed to have that problem. There was no indication whether
scatter-gather lists might affect performance (it should improve
with less data copies, but there was no data indicating any change).

Support dumping user-space stack from kernel

Most members thought LTTng already supported this sufficiently.
If done from kernel, this would require user-space symbols in
the kernel, which seemed difficult in memory-constrained devices.
Also, no bid was received for this project.

Kernel module binary compatibility with debug features

There was concern that upstream kernel developers would break
any compatibility later that was created, over time. Also,
there was concern over who would maintain the support for this.
Finally, there were technical issues with how to collapse and
expand structures based on debug features.

Improve devm_* and get rid of boilerplate code

This appeared to be useful, and Wolfram produced good results
in the past. However, there just wasn't enough interest in
the project by the different member companies.

Mainline synaptics touchscreen driver

Not enough AG members used this driver to be interested in
collaborating on the funding of it. The Synaptics RMI4 driver
is already in the driver/input tree, just not pushed to Linus.
Synaptics is planning to do another push of this, so CEWG decided
to wait and see the outcome of that work.

Add device-tree support to pn544 NFC driver

Not enough AG members used this chip to be interested in collaborating
on the funding of it. (At least, of those attending the meeting).
The upstream driver is not compatible with Android, and the out-of-tree
driver is not difficult to maintain, with most of the functionality
residing in the user-space library. It was decided there was not
enough return on investment to justify funding this work.

Fix IRQ Domain DT support issues and gpio IRQ

This proposal was submitted very late (well past the deadline), and
there was no time to analyze it, solicit member feedback, or get bids.

Generic upgrade infrastructure for embedded systems

Most AG members thought that companies already had existing upgrade
solutions (e.g. Android already has well-established upgrade mechanisms)
Also, most members didn't think a one-size-fits-all approach would be
useful. The proposal seems to be based on a particular file system
layout, and doesn't handle special use cases like read-only partitions.

Support asymetric RSA in Crypto API

This project seemed useful, and many companies were interested.
However, the only bid received was from a company that looked likely
to already receive some projects this round (and they might not
have the bandwidth to work on this and others.) This was rated lower
priority than other projects bid upon by the same contractor.


Ezequiel Garcia
 

On 10 December 2013 19:05, Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...> wrote:
[..]

Here is the list of projects that the CE working group decided to fund:

1. Setup LTSI testing/validation infrastructure
2. CPU Shielding capability
3. Device-tree documentation
4. Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
5. Android boot time improvements
6. Compressed printk messages
7. Add support for CONFIG_NUMA to ARM
8. More robust UBIFS support
Added a small "Status" entry, marking the above as selected projects.

You can see details about these project by following the links at:
http://elinux.org/CEWG_Open_Project_Proposal_2013#Selected_Projects
And added a link to the selected projects list, to the complete project list:

http://elinux.org/Project_Proposals_for_2013

Feel free to modify or correct the modifications.

Sorry for the delay and regards!
--
Ezequiel García, VanguardiaSur
www.vanguardiasur.com.ar


Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...>
 

On Friday, December 27, 2013 4:27 PM, Ezequiel García wrote:
On 10 December 2013 19:05, Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...> wrote:
[..]

Here is the list of projects that the CE working group decided to fund:

1. Setup LTSI testing/validation infrastructure
2. CPU Shielding capability
3. Device-tree documentation
4. Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
5. Android boot time improvements
6. Compressed printk messages
7. Add support for CONFIG_NUMA to ARM
8. More robust UBIFS support
Added a small "Status" entry, marking the above as selected projects.

You can see details about these project by following the links at:
http://elinux.org/CEWG_Open_Project_Proposal_2013#Selected_Projects
And added a link to the selected projects list, to the complete project list:

http://elinux.org/Project_Proposals_for_2013
This looks good. Thanks. I thought you were also planning on adding the
notes to other projects about why they weren't selected. Do you still plan
to do this, or was I mistaken?
-- Tim


Ezequiel Garcia
 

On 30 December 2013 14:41, Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...> wrote:

On Friday, December 27, 2013 4:27 PM, Ezequiel García wrote:
On 10 December 2013 19:05, Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...> wrote:
[..]

Here is the list of projects that the CE working group decided to fund:

1. Setup LTSI testing/validation infrastructure
2. CPU Shielding capability
3. Device-tree documentation
4. Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
5. Android boot time improvements
6. Compressed printk messages
7. Add support for CONFIG_NUMA to ARM
8. More robust UBIFS support
Added a small "Status" entry, marking the above as selected projects.

You can see details about these project by following the links at:
http://elinux.org/CEWG_Open_Project_Proposal_2013#Selected_Projects
And added a link to the selected projects list, to the complete project list:

http://elinux.org/Project_Proposals_for_2013
This looks good. Thanks. I thought you were also planning on adding the
notes to other projects about why they weren't selected. Do you still plan
to do this, or was I mistaken?
Yes that was the plan, you weren't mistaken.

If the "status" tag looks good, then let's keep it for projects that
are not selected
for sponsor and add the details about it at the bottom. Something like this?

http://elinux.org/Improve_UBI_user_space_tools

Again, sorry for the delay...
--
Ezequiel García, VanguardiaSur
www.vanguardiasur.com.ar


Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...>
 

On Monday, December 30, 2013 9:56 AM, Ezequiel García [ezequiel@...] wrote:

If the "status" tag looks good, then let's keep it for projects that
are not selected
for sponsor and add the details about it at the bottom. Something like this?

http://elinux.org/Improve_UBI_user_space_tools
The status tag is good, but please add the year the item was not selected.
We had a project that was rejected 2 years ago, but selected this year.
Also, please put the 'non-selected' notes section in a sub-heading under
'Notes'. I've changed the Improve_UBI_user_space_tools page as
an example.

Can you please follow those for the other non-selected items?

Thanks
-- Tim


Ezequiel Garcia
 

On 30 December 2013 15:13, Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...> wrote:
On Monday, December 30, 2013 9:56 AM, Ezequiel García [ezequiel@...] wrote:

If the "status" tag looks good, then let's keep it for projects that
are not selected
for sponsor and add the details about it at the bottom. Something like this?

http://elinux.org/Improve_UBI_user_space_tools
The status tag is good, but please add the year the item was not selected.
We had a project that was rejected 2 years ago, but selected this year.
Also, please put the 'non-selected' notes section in a sub-heading under
'Notes'. I've changed the Improve_UBI_user_space_tools page as
an example.

Can you please follow those for the other non-selected items?
Done! Feel free to review and suggest any further improvement.

Thanks a lot for providing all this information,
--
Ezequiel García, VanguardiaSur
www.vanguardiasur.com.ar


Bird, Tim <Tim.Bird@...>
 

Done! Feel free to review and suggest any further improvement.

Thanks a lot for providing all this information,
Thanks for getting this on the wiki.
-- Tim