[U-Boot] [PATCH sunxi-tools v2 0/2] Support unified u-boot SPL for SD cards and FEL mode

[Siarhei Siamashka <siarhei.siamashka@gmail.com>]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2015 15:14:51 -0700
Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org> wrote:

> Hi Siarhei,
> 
> On 8 February 2015 at 19:37, Siarhei Siamashka
> <siarhei.siamashka@gmail.com> wrote:
> > An updated variant of the older patch
> >     http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2015-February/204024.html
> >
> > These patches are not for the u-boot code (unless u-boot decides to
> > cannibalize the 'fel' tool later) but still provide a glue layer
> > between the Allwinner BROM code and the u-boot SPL code. And need
> > to play nice with both of them.
> 
> It's an interesting idea actually - I wonder what people think about
> putting these tools in the source tree. I suspect it could get a bit
> out of hand? But it would make it easier to keep things in sync,

Yes, keeping it is sync with the mksunxiboot program would be easier
in this case.

But I searched a bit, and can see that sunxi-tools is already packaged
in some linux distributions, for example:

    https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=sunxi-tools

Maybe it's better to keep the 'fel' tool in the 'sunxi-tools' package
and just make sure that it gets reasonably well supported in linux
distributions.

In addition, there might be other bootloaders or "bare metal" users.
I have found this very cool project, which relies on the FEL mode
and allows to run code on the OpenRISC core in Allwinner A31:

    https://github.com/skristiansson/ar100-info

What's particularly interesting is that it apparently had the DRAM
controller support for A31 (sun6i) even before this was implemented
in u-boot :)

-- 
Best regards,
Siarhei Siamashka