[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/7] fdt: Replace u-boot-dtb.bin with u-boot.bin

Simon Glass
2016-01-25T22:01:06Z

Hi Otavio,

On 25 January 2016 at 14:57, Otavio Salvador
<otavio.salvador@ossystems.com.br> wrote:
> Hello Simon,
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 6:30 PM, Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org> wrote:
>> At present u-boot.bin holds the plain U-Boot binary without the device tree.
>> This is somewhat annoying since you need either u-boot.bin or u-boot-dtb.bin
>> depending on whether device tree is used.
>>
>> This series adjusts the build such that u-boot.bin includes a device tree,
>> and the plain binary is in u-boot-nodtb.bin. For now u-boot-dtb.bin remains
>> the same.
>>
>> This should be acceptable since:
>>
>> - without OF_CONTROL, u-boot.bin still does not include a device tree
>> - with OF_CONTROL, u-boot-dtb.bin does not change
>>
>> The main impact is build systems which are set up to use u-boot.bin as
>> the output file and then add a device tree. These will have to change to use
>> u-boot-nodtb.bin instead.
>>
>> The original decision to use a separate u-boot-dtb.bin was aimed at allowing
>> any device tree file to be concatenated to the u-boot.bin image after the
>> build. However this no-longer seems so important. More important is the
>> convenience of using the same output file regardless of the setting for
>> OF_CONTROL.
>
> This makes sense for user-friendness point of view and still allows
> for build systems to interact over the raw copy of U-Boot to
> concatenate it with the desired set of Device Tree files.
>
> I think the more platforms move to Device Tree (from U-Boot point of
> view) the more important this change is.

Yes that is my motivation. We have been adding more and more
special-case Makefile rules, and build/deploy instruction have had to
change, etc. This way we can make the DT conversion a bit more
seamless.

>
> I do support this addition. Tom, please make sure to mention this on
> the NEWS entry for the next release as integrations must to be aware
> of this behavior change.

Regards,
Simon