Re: Emdebian sprint - flash-kernel discussion
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011, Andy Green wrote:
> Over the longer term I think it could be possible to arrange things that
> - hwpacks as they are
> - initrds, and
> - Qemu requirement for image composition, maybe whole l-m-c
> could in most or all cases be dispensed with. In that situation
> l-m-c itself would ideally disappear into composition-host-runnable
> scripts down /etc/board-specific.d or /usr/share/whatever.d for
> hosts that have a concept of external bootloader and / or kernel
> composition (ie, not shoving it in local NAND but SD card). So, at
> what used to be l-m-c time you run on the composition host the same
> scripts that the native device uses for bootloader and kernel
> install from the composed rootfs itself, with suitable abstraction
> of device names and so on.
>
> Any scripting config left from kernel package install could be
> batched and deferred until first boot where it runs natively.
Hmm this is a bit too far-looking for me
> Another kinda-related simplification that would pay dividends is to
> enable taking advantage of multi-board kernels within the same arch
> that are possible, by having the same deal in terms of multi-board
> bootloaders within the same arch. Currently X-loader and U-Boot
> take a compile-time config approach that forces them to emit
> ultra-specific bootloader binaries.
>
> If that was fixed then it'd be possible to have, eg, a single Omap4
> kernel package and a single Omap4 bootloader package that worked on
> all supported Omap4 boards and so on.
So John Rigby had proposed a similar approach, but Steve Sakoman had
suggested that it's really hard to identify the board you're running on
safely. And you need the information of the exact board relatively
early because you need to setup DDR, access the MMC and serial console
etc.
--
Loïc Minier
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