Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH 29/30] RFC: Use binman for a sunxi board

[Simon Glass]

Hi Ian,

On 26 July 2016 at 07:35, Ian Campbell  wrote:
> (adding Hans)
>
> On Mon, 2016-07-25 at 18:59 -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
>> Add an example usage of binman for a sunxi board. This involves adding the
>> > image definition to the device tree and using it in the Makefile.
>
> My concern with this approach is that the *.dts(i) files used for sunxi
> are sync'd unmodified from the upstream repo. I think this is a
> valuable property to retain in terms of maintenance burden for us
> (resync is trivial only if there are no local changes).

Thanks for looking at it.

One option is to put the local changes in an #include file. We have a
similar problem with "u-boot,dm-pre-reloc". We really should be able
to push these sorts of things upstream

>
> The conflict is then whether the device tree people would consider this
> new block to be "describing the hardware" or not and therefore whether
> these changes would be welcomed/allowed upstream. I'm not sure which
> way it would go TBH.

Me neither. Although there is a flash map / partition map device tree
binding and this is similar.

The binman description lays out what the boot ROM needs in many cases,
which is pretty close to being the 'hardware'.

>
> There is also an issue with duplication, since this stanza is going to
> be the same for all the dozens of sunxi platforms. I suppose this can
> be addressed by putting it in a suitable .dtsi file, but that does sort
> of start to suggest that this information belongs outside the per-board
> .dts in a per-platform file (at which point I would have have to ask if
> .dts is the best/most convenient syntax?).

Yes I think we could use the same thing for large groups of boards,
but we already have an soc-specific .dtsi in most cases, so that
should work quite nicely.

The nice things about device tree are:

- people understand it
- it can be accessed at run-time (e.g. so we know where to find the
next image to load)
- we have robust tools for dealing with device tree source and binaries

Regards,
Simon
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Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH 29/30] RFC: Use binman for a sunxi board

[Ian Campbell]

(adding Hans)

On Mon, 2016-07-25 at 18:59 -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
> Add an example usage of binman for a sunxi board. This involves adding the
> > image definition to the device tree and using it in the Makefile.

My concern with this approach is that the *.dts(i) files used for sunxi
are sync'd unmodified from the upstream repo. I think this is a
valuable property to retain in terms of maintenance burden for us
(resync is trivial only if there are no local changes).

The conflict is then whether the device tree people would consider this
new block to be "describing the hardware" or not and therefore whether
these changes would be welcomed/allowed upstream. I'm not sure which
way it would go TBH.

There is also an issue with duplication, since this stanza is going to
be the same for all the dozens of sunxi platforms. I suppose this can
be addressed by putting it in a suitable .dtsi file, but that does sort
of start to suggest that this information belongs outside the per-board 
.dts in a per-platform file (at which point I would have have to ask if
.dts is the best/most convenient syntax?).

Ian.
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[U-Boot] [PATCH 29/30] RFC: Use binman for a sunxi board

[Simon Glass]

Add an example usage of binman for a sunxi board. This involves adding the
image definition to the device tree and using it in the Makefile.

This is for example only.

Signed-off-by: Simon Glass 
---

 Makefile|  4 +---
 arch/arm/dts/sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dts | 12 
 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 6155f11..8862b8b 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1084,10 +1084,8 @@ u-boot-x86-16bit.bin: u-boot FORCE
 endif
 
 ifneq ($(CONFIG_SUNXI),)
-OBJCOPYFLAGS_u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin = -I binary -O binary \
-  --pad-to=$(CONFIG_SPL_PAD_TO) --gap-fill=0xff
 u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin: spl/sunxi-spl.bin u-boot.img FORCE
-   $(call if_changed,pad_cat)
+   $(call if_changed,binman)
 endif
 
 ifneq ($(CONFIG_TEGRA),)
diff --git a/arch/arm/dts/sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dts 
b/arch/arm/dts/sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dts
index 1a8b39b..141044e 100644
--- a/arch/arm/dts/sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dts
+++ b/arch/arm/dts/sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dts
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
  */
 
 /dts-v1/;
+#include 
 #include "sun7i-a20.dtsi"
 #include "sunxi-common-regulators.dtsi"
 
@@ -62,6 +63,17 @@
stdout-path = "serial0:115200n8";
};
 
+   binman {
+   filename = "u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin";
+   pad-byte = <0xff>;
+   blob {
+   filename = "spl/sunxi-spl.bin";
+   };
+   u-boot-img {
+   pos = ;
+   };
+   };
+
leds {
compatible = "gpio-leds";
pinctrl-names = "default";
-- 
2.8.0.rc3.226.g39d4020

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