Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH v1 1/2] package/fpgautil: new package

[Thomas Petazzoni via buildroot <buildroot@buildroot.org>]

Hello Neal,

On Thu, 24 Apr 2025 05:31:57 +0000
"Frager, Neal" <neal.frager@amd.com> wrote:

> > This should only contain the package name, i.e "fpgautil", or if we
> > rename it "xilinx-fpgautil".  
> 
> Ok, I will change this.

Thanks, I've seen your v2. Much appreciated.

> > +FPGAUTIL_VERSION = xlnx-rel-v2024.2_update3
> > +FPGAUTIL_SITE = $(call github,Xilinx,meta-xilinx,$(FPGAUTIL_VERSION))  
> 
> > I was going to suggest that we download only the source file, but that
> > doesn't work because it doesn't contain the version in its file name.
> > So we have to download the whole Yocto layer just to grab one source
> > file. Sigh.  
> 
> I had the exact same thought, but could not come up with a better solution.
> At least the meta-xilinx repo is still <1MB in size, so the download and
> extraction time is still in the noise for the overall build process.

Ah, it's only 1 MB, then fair enough.

> > What about using the vendor-agnostic OpenFPGALoader instead, packaged
> > as package/openfpgaloader/ ?  
> 
> I was not aware of this package.  Do you know how well it is maintained?

The Buildroot package I don't know, but the upstream OpenFPGALoader
package is very active, and well maintained. It is becoming the
de-facto open-source standard for FPGA programming.

> At the moment, I have two reasons for wanting to still support the
> xilinx-fpgautil package.
> 
> 1) The OpenFPGALoader does not seem to support Versal PDI files yet, so it
> would be incomplete for our needs.

Correct. My point was not to claim that it was right now a drop-in
replacement, but that it was another area where Xilinx could try to
leverage existing vendor-neutral projects rather than inventing
yet-another-vendor-specific-non-standard tool like vendors like to
usually do :-)

> 2) All the Xilinx documentation talks about the fpgautil program.  And on top
> of this, I had a discussion with one of my customers regarding the use of
> Buildroot vs Yocto, and their primary reason for why they felt they "had" to
> use Yocto is because it included this fpgautil program.  This is what
> triggered me to want to add it to Buildroot.  Especially since adding it is
> quite simple to do.

Understood.

> Perhaps we could create both packages, xilinx-fpgautil and the OpenFPGALoader?

OpenFPGALoader is already packaged in Buildroot. But yes, there's no
problem with having packages for both.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, co-owner and CEO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering and training
https://bootlin.com
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