Emdebian sprint - flash-kernel discussion
Hi there
flash-kernel is this place where we add support for a lot of weird
boards of various architectures. "flash-kernel" because it used to
just write a kernel to Flash memory, but that's not always true
anymore. Because it's integrated in d-i and with initramfs-tools /
linux packages, it is the easiest way to add support for one new board.
But flash-kernel isn't in the happiest state right now, as new boards
were added by copy-pasting the installation logic of other boards over
and over. Also, Ubuntu added more and more boards and features to its
flash-kernel package, and the delta is really big now (I will take part
of the blame for allowing this to happen).
In the light of this situation, and because I think Debian and
derivatives will support more and more boards via flash-kernel in the
future (for instance modern ARM boards in the armel/armhf ports), I'm
interested in improving flash-kernel's code, architecture and
scalability (in fact, I started working on it [1]).
I'm at the Emdebian sprint in Cambridge this week and I wanted to
pursue work on flash-kernel this week, but a lot of people here would
like to have a discussion on this work, and other people seem to be
interested in solving the same problems in flash-kernel. So in the
interest of avoiding work duplication and in the hope to come up with a
good roadmap and target architecture for flash-kernel, I'll be hosting
a discussion on flash-kernel development tomorrow morning at 11am UK
time. (Sorry for the late notice!) If you're interested in
flash-kernel, if you have ideas, patches, etc. consider dialing in! Of
course, email works too. I'll work on a wiki page summarizing
tomorrow's discussion and the plans around flash-kernel.
Dial-in details:
Access code: 52386 86884#
UK Local +44 207 630 2405
UK Freephone 0800 026 0166
US Local +1 781 761 9450
US Toll Free 1 866 352 2709
Brazil 0800 881 0038
Canada 1 866 352 2710
Finland 800 523 103
France 0 805 980 044
Germany 800 589 0993
New Zealand 800 452 290
Taiwan 0800 265 855
China (North) 10 800 152 1873
China (South) 10 800 852 1873
India 000 800 100 7944
Poland 800 331 1398
Anybody is welcome to dial-in. I'd welcome if you would notify me of
your presence so that we can expect you on the call. We'll be using
#emdebian as back-channel.
Cheers,
[1] branch at http://git.debian.org/?p=users/lool/d-i/flash-kernel.git
* adds a testsuite
* consolidates code into functions
* moves board support data into a database (currently inline for
convenience of testing, but will be split out in its own file)
--
Loïc Minier
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