Re: [PATCH v2 0/1] meson: Demonstration of using binman to produce the image

[Ferass El Hafidi <vitali64pmemail@protonmail.com>]

Hi Simon,

On Thu Aug 31, 2023 at 9:54 AM CEST, neil.armstrong wrote:
> > Thanks for your efforts on this. I look forward to seeing where it ends up.

I hope we can get it to at least boot!

> >> Honestly, in my opinion, including proprietary and poorly-written
> >> Amlogic utilities lacking a proper license, into U-Boot looks like a bad idea.
> >
> > With Binman, we don't really include them in U-Boot; we allow them to
> > be fetched easily so that a complete build can be produced.

Acknowledged.

> > I don't like it either, but for users it is better than doing the
> > build manually.
>
> I'll rather spend time and effort to have a fully-upstream TF-A boot chain
> for Amlogic SoC (when possible) that maintaining support for bulky closed-source
> x86-64 binary only tools. The tools aren't even officially distributed.

I agree with Neil here. I think having U-Boot SPL for Amlogic SoCs, along with 
a unified way to sign it across all SoCs, is more worth the effort than
trying to get poorly-written Amlogic utilities to work, along with a
fully proprietary "Trusted Firmware" (it's not that secure) boot chain.
I also forgot to point out that these tools are x86_64-only, so if you
wanted to compile U-Boot on any other architecture it wouldn't work at
all.

But this RFC patch does show how binman can be used for making all that
complex signing automatically. I appreciate the effort.

>
> Neil
>
> >
> >>
> >> [1]: https://git.vitali64.duckdns.org/misc/u-boot-kii-pro.git/log/?h=wip/spl
> >> [2]: https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git/tree/plat/amlogic
> >>
> >> Cheers.
> >>
> >
> > Regards,
> > Simon

Cheers.