Re: Novena update; armhf flavor for i.MX6
Ian Campbell <ijc@hellion.org.uk> writes:
> On Mon, 2013-02-04 at 00:29 +0000, bnewbold@robocracy.org wrote:
>> Hello again debian-kernel!
>>
>> I wrote to this list in December[0] regarding the Novena open hardware
>> laptop project[1]; there is now a Debian porting wiki page here:
>>
>> http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/Debian
>>
>> I met Ben H and bunnie in late December, and then had access to a
>> development board again a week ago. I was able to build and boot an SD
>> card image using a mainline linux kernel (clean ~3.8 kernel.org checkout
>> with custom defconfig), a custom u-boot, and wheezy armhf rootfs
>> (instructions at [2]).
>
> I don't see any mention of Novena in the mainline git logs. I also took
> a look in some of the likely looking arm-soc branches. Perhaps I'm just
> looking for the wrong keywords? Or maybe with all the DT stuff no Novena
> specific patches were required?
imx6 is nowadays DT only. Fsl devs are testing only on DT so trying to
support imx6 on non-DT setup will likely leads to troubles. If one
looks at the imx6 related dts file in mainline, afaik there's only
sabrelite devices. So, this probably means that some work is needed to get
Novena hardware support in mainline.
>
>> It sounds like there has been talk of a unified i.mx5 and i.mx6 armhf
>> debian kernel flavor (something like '-mx'),
>
> I wonder if we have now reached the point with all the upstream single
> image work where we could have a single flavour for armhf? i.e. a single
> generic flavour not -mx (or maybe two, regular and lpae).
There's still some work needed. Some devices (imx5/omap) have not yet been
converted into DT.
>
> Even if we can't do that right now I'd have thought it ought to be
> doable by the time we freeze for jessie.
>
I think that having a omap/mvebu/imx/... multiplatform kernel for jessie
is possible but clearly not for wheezy. I'm also not sure we'll be able to drop
non-DT armhf kernels soon. At least every new platform should be supported with DT.
>> which would be the place for
>> us to submit kernel defconfig tweaks to, and potentially device tree files
>> before they are accepted upstream (is there policy for that?).
>
> debian-kernel@ is the place.
>
> defconfigs are in debian/config, you should patch the one for the
> flavour concerned.
>
> For general patches backported from upstream (or at the least a relevant
> arch maintainer's tree targeting the next merge window) are preferred.
>
> I don't know about Device Tree patches -- I suppose there isn't much
> reason to deviate from the upstream first policy. Getting a device tree
> for stuff where the code is already upstream into mainline ought to be
> pretty easy.
>
> If there are patches which aren't in mainline yet then I would
> prioritise getting those into mainline above getting them into Debian's
> kernels.
>
yes, the device should be supported in mainline first. IMX6 support may
be missing some parts so getting this support in mainline first should
be the main priority.
>> I have no idea what would be involved in creating or maintaining a new
>> flavor[3]. How can I help? Is a proposal required?
>
> Patches! :-)
>
> As I say above we may not need a new flavour at all, but if you did
> you'd be looking first at modifying debian/config/armf/defines and
> debian/config/armhf/config.flavour. Other potentially interesting places
> would be debian/installer/armhf.
If we have a new flavour, it should be a multiplatform one imho. In the
case of IMX6, there's no real point to create a new flavor if it's not
to make a multiplatform kernel. It's already possible to build a kernel
with mx5 and mx6 support iirc.
Arnaud
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