Removing Drivers For Outdated ARM Platforms Will Lighten The Kernel By ~247k Lines

The Linux kernel is going to see the removal of a number of recently deprecated ARM 32-bit platforms. Following the deprecation in Linux 7.3, removing the old ARM platforms will lighten the kernel by around 55k lines of code. But removing now unused drivers only relevant to those platforms will mean roughly a quarter million lines of code can be removed from the kernel source tree.

Longtime Linux developer and maintainer Arnd Bergmann has been leading the effort on the deprecation and removal of long obsolete 32-bit ARM platforms. The affected platforms include the A1100, Footbridge, RISCPC, Orion / Dove / MV78xx0, OMAP24xx, i.MX31, i.MX targets without an MMU, LPC18xx, STM32f4/f7/h7 MCUs, Versatile MPS2, AT91 SAMV7, Axxia, and legacy PXA board files.

Beyond the direct platform code already sent out on the kernel mailing list, Bergmann has been working on the board-remove-7.3 Git branch that clears out the other associated drivers too.

With the current state of the Git branch as of writing, around 300 patches add up to some 247k lines of code being deleted and +5k lines of code added.

Bergmann previously discussed on the LKML that the removals could happen for Linux 7.4 or Linux 7.5 but more than likely will end up being the latter.

While clearing out a quarter million lines of old / obsolete / unmaintained code is significant, the overall Linux kernel source tree is currently close to 41 million lines.