Source Tree Kernel Linux x86 32-bit dan 64-bit Mulai Digabung

The topic of sharing more x86 code has been discussed on LKML a number of times. Various approaches were discussed and we decided to advance the discussion by implementing a full solution that brings the transition to a shared tree to completion.

Warning: our approach is quite a bit more extreme than what has been suggested before.

The core idea behind our project is simple to describe: we introduce a new arch/x86/ and include/asm-x86/ file hierarchy that includes all the existing 32-bit and 64-bit x86 code and allows the building of either a 32-bit (i386) kernel or a 64-bit (x86_64) kernel.

In this initial implementation the old arch/i386 and arch/x86_64 trees are removed _immediately_, in the same commit, and all future x86 development goes on in the new, shared tree. So the transition right now is one atomic operation.

As a next step we plan to generate a gradual, fully bisectable, fully working switchover from the current code to the fully populated arch/x86 tree. It will result in about 1000-2000 commits. We are releasing our current solution because it 100% represents the finally resulting arch/x86 source tree already, and we first wanted to make sure that the new architecture layout works fine and folks are happy before we go and do the (even more complex) fine-grained work.

A git tree is available from:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/linux-2.6-x86.git

One (large!) combo patch is available at:

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tglx/linux-x86.2.6.22-git-ede13d.combo.patch.bz2

the patch is against this upstream -git head:

commit ede13d81b4dda409a6d271b34b8e2ec9383e255d

It makes little sense to apply this patch to anything else because these architectures are such a fast-moving target....