[cip-dev] u-boot policy for CIP

[agustin.benito@codethink.co.uk (Agustin Benito Bethencourt)]

Hi,

On 16/03/17 12:07, Chris Paterson wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I?m bringing a discussion I?ve started in other places here as it will
> benefit from wider participation.
>
> As you know the aim of CIP is to maintain not just the Kernel, but a
> number of other ?core packages?. One of these is u-boot.
>
> For the Kernel the project will provide super long term support for a
> chosen version. For u-boot this will be harder to achieve as
>
> a)there are no ?LTS? versions of u-boot to base our ?SLTS? version on;
>
> b)a lot of hardware providers tend to use forks for their platforms,
> rather than add full functionality upstream.
>
> Ideally CIP should choose a version of u-boot and use it when
> testing/verifying the CIP Kernel on the reference hardware. How we
> actively maintain that version (bug fixes/security patches/features?) is
> another question. Given that most devices in the field won?t have a way
> to update u-boot in the field (security issues/practicalities), I think
> ?SLTS? support for u-boot may not be required. Perhaps we just tag a
> version of u-boot at the launch of a new CIP Kernel and stick with it?
>
> How do we decide what u-boot version to support? Currently it looks like
> the BBB platform are shipped with 2014.04 and the Renesas platform is
> shipped with 2013.01. That said, it looks like there is upstream support
> for BBB [1], but how the feature set compares to the version shipped
> with the platform I don?t know. There is also support for some Renesas
> platforms [2], but not for the exact board CIP will be using.
>
> Do we want to push Ti/Renesas to ensure there is full support for their
> boards upstream? When this is done do we pick the first version that
> includes this support to work with? Or do we just stick with the vendor
> provided forks?
>
> Is there a particular feature set that CIP requires?
>
> Forgive my random ramblings, I appreciate there are a lot of different
> questions here!

Slightly related to this topic, Ben H. gave a talk/Q&A about hardware 
support in Debian Stable back in DebConf13

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLTs1ikQR5E

>
> [1] https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/board/ti/am335x
>
> [2] https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/board/renesas
>
> Kind regards, Chris
>
>
>
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-- 
Agustin Benito Bethencourt
Principal Consultant - FOSS at Codethink
agustin.benito at codethink.co.uk