Hi, On Mon, 4 May 2026 at 07:16, Simon Glass <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > As you know, I maintain several tools which are part of the U-Boot tree. > > Tom has previously suggested that it would be better to move patman > out of the U-Boot tree, e.g. to its own Github project. It is a > general tool which can be used with Linux and other > mailing-list/patchwork-based projects. I have never been keen on > taking on the extra effort required, but I've recently added more > features and am wondering whether now might be a good time to do this. > > Buildman is quite obviously designed specifically for U-Boot. I have > made some improvements recently (a large code refactor and distributed > builds). I would like to push those changes to mainline. Do people > think it should be in a separate tree somewhere? > > Binman was written with U-Boot in mind but supports other projects > (such as Zephyr). It is generic enough that it could be separated. The > impact would be harder code review. > > We also have smaller things like qconfig (which I have substantially > rewritten to make it fast) and dtoc, which is very tailored to U-Boot. > > What do people think? Of all of these, patman would be the easiest to > move, with the least impact on existing workflows.
Thank you to those who have commented on this thread. Quentin, I think there is a mailing-list patch for the pygit2 problem. For qconfig, your feature should be easy enough to implement. If you suggest a syntax I could take a look. I am considering moving all the major tools I wrote out of U-Boot, each into its own project. As Neha points out, Binman is useful as a general tool. Patman clearly is too. This leaves Buildman which is U-Boot-specific in many ways, but it hardly seems sensible to keep just that one in-tree, plus I have a substantial code-refactor and new feature to figure out how to upstream. With some adjustments it could be used in other projects. The qconfig tool is in a similar boat, particularly now that it can rebuild the database in two seconds instead of a minute. I also have some other tools I have written recently, both of which might have generic application: - pickman, an AI-powered cherry picker which could be applied to other projects such as Linux (but it currently is tied to gitlab) - codman, a simple source-code analyser which tells you what files and code lines are actually built for a board If I do take this path, I will need to figure out a way to make it easy to install the tools for use with U-Boot. This could involve using 'pip install, cloning a repo, or some other mechanism. I could use a PR workflow rather than the mailing list, if that is easier. Please do continue to send your thoughts on this. I cannot attend the call next week but hope to join the next one. Regards, Simon
