Sub-architectures in update-modules

[Chris Rutter <chris@willow.armlinux.org>]

The various varieties of ARM architecture hardware most certainly don't have
a standard set of mappings from common module aliases `soundcore', etc.
onto modules; for this reason, it seems we need a system like m68k, where
we'd have /etc/modutils/arch/arm.{netwinder,acorn,...}.

There's a bash function archmodel() in update-modules:

  archmodel() {
    local arch=`arch`
    local model=""
    if [ $arch = "m68k" ]; then
      if [ -f /proc/hardware ]; then
         model=`cat /proc/hardware | sed -ne 's/^Model:[[:space:]]*//p'`
         case $model in
            Atari*) model="atari"; ;;
            Amiga*) model="amiga"; ;;
            Macintosh*) model="mac"; ;;
            Motorola*) model="MVME"; ;;
            *) model="generic"; ;;
          esac
          model=".${model}"
      else
        echo "/proc/hardware does not exist, assuming general m68k system"
      fi
    fi
    echo "${arch}${model}"
  }

I assume the same wants to be done with the `Hardware:' field in /proc/cpuinfo
on ARM architectures -- the question is, what should the canonical mappings
be?

If both the A5000, RiscPC and later hardware can all be accommodation under
one set of modules, I would propose making the sub-architecture simply
`acorn', denoting all hardware derived from 32-bit Acorn ARM machines.
However, this possibly may not be the case; how about `a5k', `medusa', and
then other aliases files for whatever weird and wonderful hardware Castle
are dreaming up (`mico', `riscstation')?

What about the Footbridge platforms?

c.