Linux 5.8 released: Bootlin contributions

Linux 5.8 was released recently. See our usual resources for a good coverage of the highlights of this new release: KernelNewbies page, LWN.net article on the first part of the merge window, LWN.net article on the second part of the merge window.

On our side, we contributed a total of 155 commits to Linux 5.8, which makes Bootlin the 19th contributing company by number of commits according to Linux Kernel Patch Statistic. The highlights of our contributions are:

  • Miquèl Raynal contributed a completely new NAND controller driver: the arasan-nand-controller driver, used on Xilinx platforms.
  • In the MTD subsystem, Miquèl Raynal, as one of the co-maintainers, made a substantial number of contributions: cleanups in the nandsim driver, drop of the nand_release() API, support in the NAND core for the specificities of the arasan-nand-controller driver in terms of ECC handling (we will soon publish a blog post on this topic!)
  • On the support of Atmel/Microchip platforms
    • Alexandre Belloni migrated the SAMA5D3, AT91SAM9N12, AT91RM9200 and AT91SAM9G45 Device Tree files to use the new clock DT bindings
    • Grégory Clement modified the atmel_usba_udc USB device controller driver to no longer require describing all USB endpoints in the Device Tree, since they are always the same for a given SoC.
  • Grégory Clement contributed a number of improvements and fixes for the n_gsm line discipline driver, which allows to multiplex an UART used to communicate with a GSM modem. These improvements and fixes allowed the n_gsm driver to be fully stable for one of our customers.
  • In the RTC subsystem, Alexandre Belloni (maintainer of that subsystem) did a number of small improvements to various RTC drivers.
  • Antoine Ténart has done a number of improvements in the support for Microchip/Microsemi networking products: improvements to the mscc-miim MDIO driver, improvements to the MSCC Ocelot Ethernet switch driver, improvements to the MSCC Ethernet PHY Driver.

Also, several Bootlin engineers are maintainers of various areas of the Linux kernel:

  • Miquèl Raynal, as the NAND maintainer and MTD co-maintainer, reviewed and merged 57 patches from other contributors
  • Alexandre Belloni, as the RTC maintainer and Microchip platform support co-maintainer, reviewed and merged 54 patches from other contributors
  • Grégory Clement, as the Marvell EBU platform support co-maintainer, reviewed and merged 13 patches from other contributors

Here is the complete list of our contributions:

Author: Thomas Petazzoni

Thomas Petazzoni is Bootlin's co-owner and CEO. Thomas joined Bootlin in 2008 as a kernel and embedded Linux engineer, became CTO in 2013, and co-owner/CEO in 2021. More details...

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