{"action":"opened","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/2102","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/2102/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/2102/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/2102/events","html_url":"https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/2102","id":77271927,"number":2102,"title":"Hardware supported by the community and HW supported by vendors in own fork","user":{"login":"fmalpartida","id":1113097,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1113097?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida","html_url":"https://github.com/fmalpartida","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/fmalpartida/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":0,"created_at":"2015-05-17T10:06:52Z","updated_at":"2015-05-17T10:06:52Z","closed_at":null,"body":"This is a topic covered over the last few Marlin HO where we recognised that a range of \"new HW support\" has crawled in into the main development baseline supported by the community.\r\n\r\nThe discussion took us to point to the fact, that supporting such \"new HW\" was diverting time, effort and resources to supporting identical boards and example configurations that are just customisations of already supported/existing boards.\r\n\r\nThe main idea behind supporting different boards is to have a wide offering of unique electronics in the base code and vendor specific customisations/configurations should be done on their own fork.\r\n\r\nOne of the main drivers of the discussion was the exponential raise of \"variants\" and \"example\" configurations that are currently finding its way into the main branch. Looking into the future, and if adopted as a trend, we could end up in an unrealistic situation where by the gross amount of files in the repo are \"new variants\" and \"new examples\". To make things a bit more fun, new variants introduced have broke the numbering scheme that was in place to identify boards by processor used.\r\n\r\nIn my mind, a good approach is to thin down the range of supported board to unique boards and have vendors address their particular customisations in their own fork that they publish to their customers. They can always keep up to date and maintain their forks/boards with the latest release branch. This way they are in a good position to maintain their boards and release when they see fit.\r\n\r\nAs far a examples are concerned, they should be kept as they were, limited to a cartesian, core XY/H-bot, delta, ... Perhaps also addressing Marlin specific feature configurations (autoleveling, LCD configurations, ...) which is more relevant to the community than showcasing a product."}}