Re: [dtc] breaking out libfdt from dtc so other progs can use it

[Jerone Young <jyoung5@us.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 14:31 -0600, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:40:43 -0600
> Jerone Young <jyoung5@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> > Currently the dtc source code has libfdt integrated in it. This seems to
> > have become place for upstream libfdt changes. Now we all know everyone
> > (linux kernel, cuboot) also have their own versions over libfdt. But if
> > another userspace app wants to use libfdt , it has to copy it from the
> > dtc source and try to maintain it's own copy.
> > 
> > The question I have is can libfdt be split out from dtc source, and
> > become it's own thing. This way other userspace apps can easily download
> > it and link with it?
> 
> Downloading isn't changed at all by splitting it out to it's own repo.

Well it is, as we could then point to libfdt repository. Right now we
need to download dtc ..the do make libfdt ... and then we are rollin. So
there are some steps required. 

It would just be really really nice if it was more stand alone.

> 
> > The reason I ask is I have added dynamic manipulation support of device
> > trees in memory into qemu for KVM. But the issue is keeping a copy of
> > libfdt in the KVM userspace repository, which is getting some opposition
> > (understandably). But this would be much easier if there was a libfdt
> > repo for the library so that we wouldn't need to keep our own copy.
> 
> It seems the real crux of your issue is that you want distros to
> provide a libfdt package.  That can be done by creating a subpackage
> off of the dtc package.  The harder part for certain distros will be
> either convincing them to allow the static libfdt to exist, or creating
> a shared library for it instead.

Ultimately this would be the most optimal solution for the future. If
distros could distribute a library with headers that would be awesome. 
Since this is something that qemu in general can take advantage of (not
just KVM qemu)...having libs in the distro would be easier for
distributing.

But for now I just need a way for users to easily get a hold of libary
and just point cflags and ldflags at the directory where it is
compiled. 


> 
> josh