Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs

As expected, the Linux 4.17 kernel will move ahead with dropping support for older/unmaintained CPU architectures.

The architectures on the chopping block for Linux 4.17 are Blackfin, CRIS, FRV, M32R, Metag, MN10300, Score, and Tile. Besides the CPU architecture code, the device drivers exclusive to those ports are also being removed. These ports are being removed because they are obsolete and with no active users of this latest kernel code.

Some architectures facing risk of being eliminated include Unicore32 and Hexagon, but their maintainers are working to improve the situation.

The good news is that dropping support for these eight obsolete CPU ports lightens up the Linux kernel by about 467,668 lines of code. The pull request for killing off these CPU architectures in the mainline kernel can be found here.