preparing pcf50633 for upstream

[Mike (mwester)]

Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Andy Green wrote:
>> One of the happiest things I saw on GTA02 was Debian.  I think it is
>> great that folks are learning and driving things their own way with
>> multiple distros instead of "Openmoko Windows XP" only.  Over time
>> they'll converge on the better stuff.
> 
> Oh, I'm very happy about a diverse user space as well.
> 
> It just scares me if they're diverging on the basic system interfaces.
> I wonder if we can do better than shrug it off as an inevitable
> consequence of using many different languages and IPC mechanisms.

Personally I don't think we can simply shrug it off.  My feeling is that
 some of the different images do represent true diversity and reflect
the vision that excited me about Openmoko.  But another set of them
merely reflect the intense frustration of the community with the
perceived slow progress and the unexpected shifts in the
Openmoko-developed userspace.

As I consider some of the interesting discussions we've had on this
list, I think we can preclude some potential issues, and perhaps even
make it easier to unify some of the divergent images in the future, if
we make an effort to formalize some of the "glue" between kernel and
userspace.  (I've cc'd the devel list in case anyone there has comments
or thoughts.)

Some wiki topics that might help out could include the correct and
supported ways to:

- read and interpret battery and charging status
- power on/off, reset, and initialize the GSM
- handle the wifi interface during suspend/resume
- deal with USB gadgetfs
- correctly signal low-battery to the user

etc.

This would at least ensure that if images diverge in how they use
various kernel/userspace interfaces and features, they do so
deliberately rather than unintentionally (as I suspect might be the case
currently).

By-the-way, along with this, it would be nice if we also documented the
"standard" kernel config that all distros should try to match.  I can
understand why there might be divergence in needs in early development,
but it sure would be nice if we could all have the same kernel.  Or if I
am permitted to dream, wouldn't it be even better if we had a single
master ipkg repo for kernel and kernel modules, and all distros used that?

Regards,
Mike (mwester)