I wanted to ask why there are no updates in the 19.07 SNAPSHOT in the ATH79 build yet? While other platforms receive updates, the ATH79 platform stands still ( last build 30 July ). Are there any problems why there have been no updates so far?
You should ask on the mailing list why they intentionally dropped ath79 builds for v19, at least as I understand the thread.
I find the logic of forcing new devices to ath79 and not building the images baffling. Even more when you consider ar71xx will be dropped for the next release.
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The discussion on the mailing list:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-July/018155.html
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-July/018165.html
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-July/018169.html
That's stupid. ATH79 source now but still offering images for ar71xx even though they wanted to quit support.
Looks almost like they want to give up the ATH79 platform with this decision.
If you really want to advance the ATH79 platform then the 19.07 branch for ar71xx should be source too.
Same here.
The builds were dropped pretty much without warning.
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The plan always was to only accept new device support for ath79 and none for ar71xx anymore, then eventually switch to ath79 when it is mature enough.
Apparently people came to expect that this means that 19.07 will arrive with full fledged ath79 support already, which isn't the case unfortunately.
Due to popular demand I will enable image builds for the ath79 target in 19.07 but given that ath79 in master relies on kernel 4.19 while 19.07 builds will be based on 4.14, it is unlikely that ath79 in 19.07 will be able to receive much backports, if any at all.
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Greatly appreciated!
I’m of the opinion that this will speed the migration to ath79, as well as a broader testing base making those ports more robust when ar71xx is moved to “source only” and deprecated.
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I am pleased that this has been clarified and look forward to the finished images 
What do you mean? There are hardly any ath79 specific backports that won't be for ar71xx as well. Maybe I am wrong, there could be some, but I don't see a pattern.
I was mainly referring to DTS changes and the like which require new or fixed kernel side support.
There are some people who can take care of this kind of issues. I know at least 4-5 of them. And I don't expect to have many bugs that require immediate fixes in 19.07 ath79. The kernel part looks not too bad at the moment. There are some dirty patches still, but they hopefully they will easily survive stable 4.14 kernel life cycle.
All chipsets are mature enough on ath79. Some new devices have been added, but that doesn't bring much entropy.
Notable exceptions are NAND support. Mikrotik (and other "raw" NAND devices), at least from what I've been following, hasn't been addressed. SPI-NAND is complete, but stalled, waiting approval at https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/2184
Edit: As both the Mikrotik and ath79-nand devices have their own subtarget, it is possible to change the kernel to 4.19 within their config-default and target.mk files without impacting the ath79-generic and ath79-tiny targets. This would be a very separate discussion to that of this thread as neither were present when 19.07 was branched.
That's true. But we can exclude the devices with NAND. I forgot about them.
Great if you do that.
Having the buildbot compilations available enables wider testing, as more people can test ath79 and try wider selection of packages without the need to compile images by themsleves. Also the image generator is then available, which suit many semi-regular users.
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What is the impact of this 'change'? Will ar71xx based chipsets get ZERO 19.xx releases? E.g. My Archer C7v2 and various platforms have been outstanding (excellent).
I understand that flash sizes on the older models aren't growing... but 
At least as I understand it, ar71xx targets and 4/32 devices of all flavors will be built for v19. Both will become “source only” next release, with ar71xx being basically unsupported (meaning no significant source changes or backports).
Got it. How about 8/64 etc devices? My Archer collection has been excellent. New features appear that inevitably become irreplaceable: Wireguard, prometheus node-exporter, basically everything that makes OWRT attractive.
Devices with at least 8 MB of flash and at least 64 MB of RAM are not directly impacted by the 4/32 decision, from what I understand. (I am not a core dev, but read the Hamburg notes on the wiki and the mailing list.)
If a device hasn’t been ported to ath79, then it would be impacted by the ar71xx changes. This primarily impacts NAND-based and “obscure” devices. You can check your devices’ ath79 status by looking at the snapshots from master.
(I’ve been running my Archer C7v2 units on ath79 for a long time now.)
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So these devices which all appear currently under ar71xx will still be supported ja?:
Model TP-Link Archer C7 v2
Architecture Qualcomm Atheros QCA9558 ver 1 rev 0
And have also one:
TP-LINK Archer C7 v4
and a bunch of 2.4G:
TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v2