Re: [PATCH 1/2] fdt: Allow stacked overlays phandle references

[Pantelis Antoniou <pantelis.antoniou-OWPKS81ov/FWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org>]

Hi David,

On Mon, 2017-07-03 at 19:06 +1000, David Gibson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 05:52:25PM +0300, Pantelis Antoniou wrote:
> > This patch enables an overlay to refer to a previous overlay's
> > labels by performing a merge of symbol information at application
> > time.
> 
> This seems to be doing things the hard way.
> 

It is the minimal implementation to get things to work, with the current
overlay implementation. I do have plans for a version 2 with fixes to
a number of areas.
 
> You're essentially extending the semantics of overlay application to
> add the symbol merging.  You've implemented these extended semantics
> in libfdt, which is all very well, but that's not the only overlay
> application implementation.
> 
> 

This is a port of the same patch that's against the linux kernel.
As far as I know there's no other implementations, or at least none
that are open source.

> It seems to me a better approach would be to change dtc's -@
> implementation, so that in /plugin/ mode instead of making a global
> __symbols__ node, it puts it into the individual fragments.  That way
> the existing overlay application semantics will update the __symbols__
> node.
> 

A lot of things can be made better, on the next version. These are
minimally intrusive patches to address user requests for the current
implementation.

Why don't we start by making a list, and work towards that goal?

Care to start about what you want addressed and how?

Regards

-- Pantelis