[OE-core] Updating u-boot for oe-core or meta-yocto

[Khem Raj]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Richard Purdie
<richard.purdie at linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> I did a little research and I'd like to try and help us move forward.
>
> The "problem" at the moment is both oe-core and meta-ti have u-boot
> recipes. If Yocto were to merge in the meta-ti recipe to meta-yocto it
> would overshadow the oe-core recipe. I believe Yocto wants to encourage
> sharing a core on codebases like u-boot which are receptive and working
> to facilitate collaboration (not unlike Yocto itself).
>
> Valid questions are therefore:
>
> a) What can we do to the u-boot recipe in core to make it customisable
> from layers like meta-ti
>
> b) Is it possible for the u-boot recipe in meta-ti to be a .bbappend
> rather than a recipe which overwrites the default.
>
> For a), I know Darren has some patches which drop the COMPATIBLE_MACHINE
> usage for example and instead raise the skip parsing exception when
> UBOOT_MACHINE isn't set which is a step in the right direction. If we
> find other issues, lets fix them.
>
> For b), I talked to Koen and he's going to see how feasible this is
> although as always with this kind of issue there are various
> complicating factors.
>
> Hopefully if we work both sides of the problem we can get this resolved.
> Darren, if you could send out some of your patches so far (e.g. for
> COMPATIBLE_MACHINE) that might be helpful.
>
> If the ultimate answer is that no, meta-ti has so many changes or
> specific requirements that mean it needs to stay a .bb file then lets
> cross that bridge if we come to it but I think this discussion makes
> sense before reaching that conclusion. Its possible the last release of
> u-boot has sufficient beagle support for yocto's needs and we could use
> that instead.
>
> Just on a more general note, the agreement on resolving the beagleboard
> issue stands as is. The plan is to make beagleboard support in
> meta-yocto as near a copy of the meta-ti pieces as possible with the
> exception of the kernel where linux-yocto will import the needed patches
> to demo the kernel tooling functionality. The layer tooling under
> development will automate the process of syncing those pieces. I think
> everyone is happy with the agreement and we just need to address some
> corner cases like u-boot.
>

so is it just a question of beagleboard support or a broader support
for all machines ?
I know various boards use very different versions
of u-boot so is oe-core going to bring that support
to u-boot in oe-core and maintain that ?

IMO keeping oe-core relatively free of machine dependent stuff would be better.