[U-Boot] RFC: split ARM repo and distribute workload

[Wolfgang Denk]

Hello everybody,

ARM has always been one of the architectures that generated a big
number of different processors and SoCs, but recently the activitiy in
this area is literally exploding.  This is partially due to the fact
that ARM is currently used in many designs, so many new ARM based
processors and SoCs and even more new ARM boards show up, but another
and at least as important change is that some silicon and board
vendors have started to actively pushing their products into the
U-Boot (and Linux) mainline source trees (and *welcome* they all
are!).

It has become evident that this growing complexity has become way too
massive to be shouldered by a single custodian, even a very active one
like Jean-Christophe.

I think we have no other choice but to add more manpower to this task,
i. e. split the ARM respository and distribute the workload across a
few more custodians.

Unline with the Power architecture, where the split can be easily
defined by processor lines, with ARM it seems more logical to me to
differentiate by silicon vendors.

After much thinking I therefor suggest to implement the following
change for the ARM architecture:


master ARM repository:		Tom Rix

Atmel (AT91):			Jean-Christophe Plagniol-Villard

Freescale (i.MX)		Magnus Lilja?
				Or are there any volunteers at Freescale?

Marvell (PXA + IXP):		Jean-Christophe Plagniol-Villard

Marvell (all other):		Prafulla Wadaskar

Samsung (s3c, s5pc):		Are there any volunteers at Samsung?

Texas Instruments (OMAP):	Dirk Behme?
				Or are there any volunteers at TI?

???				???


Please let me know what you think about this idea, and if you agree
with the suggested persons - resp. if you are one of these, if you
would be willing to take such responsibility (be warned: it's a lot
of work), and/or if you have other and/or additional ideas.


We are not exactly in a hurry, but I think we should try and get this
change implemented before the end of this merge window, so the
stabilization period can already be handled by more people, thus
hopefully with less stress on any of the (new) custodians.


Thanks to all who helped so far, thanks to all who patiently suffered
from delays and other friction, and thanks in advance to everybody who
steps up to help.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
The management question ... is not _whether_ to build a pilot  system
and  throw  it away. You _will_ do that. The only question is whether
to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the
throwaway to customers.       - Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"