[fedora-arm] U-Boot?

[Henrik Nordström]

tor 2011-10-13 klockan 17:32 -0400 skrev Jon Masters:

> The question is not about supporting "u-boot", it's about supporting
> "u-boot build for board X". So the package (if indeed it is a package)
> would be for MLO (x-loader) and u-boot for a specific e.g. TI board
> because the image has to contain the bootloader. Really, I would rather
> we find a way to compose images for boards without getting into the
> u-boot business at all. Hopefully, we can just pull in some plumbing
> gunk into our image compose and tried it like prebuilt firmware.

By default Fedora policy we can't distribute boot firmware blobs built
by others. It may be possible to get an exception for this, but do not
feel right.

What we can provide is scripts which enables the user to pull the image
together from the needed pieces (even downloading them as needed).

> > Should Fedora for ARM officially support for some well known boards?
> 
> Thanks for asking it. I thought we'd already pretty much decided to
> "support" TrimSlice and PandaBoard/BeagleBoard for example.

Agreed.

GuruBox, OpenRD etc should probably be in the list as well, if there is
contributors willing to provide the needed details.

> I think we should provide a bootloader, but not firmware. Once the two
> are (correctly) separated, this will be awesome. Until then, we can
> provide a pre-built u-boot for specific boards by pulling it in as
> "firmware". I really don't see the difference between this and pulling
> in WiFi firmware that is Open Source (but not recompiled).

There is a very big difference in which CPU executes the firmware. See
the debate around qemu & system firmwares which have left Fedora qemu
without support for several targets at the moment even with all the
firmwares completely open source. In most cases simply because Fedora
lacks the needed cross-compilers for compiling the target system
firmware.

> > Do you know anyone who would be willing to help maintain u-boot within
> > Fedora?
> 
> I would be willing to help maintain specific board support, not a
> general u-boot. I would be quite against us shipping "u-boot" :)

Ofcoures it won't be a single u-boot for them all, but some u-boot-XXXX
pacakges. Preferably built from the same master package if possible.

Regards
Henirk