Wolfgang Denk had written, on 12/16/2010 02:38 PM, the following:
Dear Anand,
In message AANLkTinHGBBJ_MO=bk2wcHjwMNuti62UACJYNaBenf3j@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
To this end, we have set up an x-loader git tree on gitorious, and seeded it with Steve Sakoman's x-loader tree [1] as of 15 December 2010. (Thanks Steve for unifying so much of the forked code, and getting rid of the dependency on u-boot, and more!).
...
Deva and I have volunteered to maintain the x-loader code - everyone is welcome to contribute and help make it better. (This is our first attempt at maintaining a software project - so any help is appreciated).
May I ask what your goal is for such a project?
You mentioned that x-loader was derived from U-Boot, and shares some code. What is the benefit from maintaining it as a separate project?
You write "getting rid of the dependency on u-boot", and try to make this sound as an advantage. Is this really the case? Or did you just cut off your feed from upstream?
The statement was more in-terms of some ghastly ln -s ../../../u-boot/include/asm/mux.h kind of stuff which existed in x-loader previously, practically making build of x-loader requiring that u-boot source be in the same location as the x-loader. yeah, it was atrocious, and is one of the steps of breaking that dependency that took place.
Would it not make more sense to merge it into the U-Boot tree, so it gets maintained as one project, and code is automatically kept in sync?
My 2 cents: The eventual long term goal is to make u-boot/other alternatives (such as OMAP configuration header[1][2]) capable of replacing x-loader. We have much to do to reach that stage(while we work on it in parallel). in the meanwhile, current xfurcation (since there are more than 5 or 6 different known forks at least) make it impossible to do where we stand and what needs to be done.
In a way, considering a single x-loader as a standin solution while a final alternative evolves and becomes practical is important and is an evolutionary step IMHO.
Ref: [1] https://gforge.ti.com/gf/download/docmanfileversion/229/3870/linux-without-a... [2] http://nishanthmenon.blogspot.com/2009/05/configuration-header-no-more-x-loa...