Hi,
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 01:26:18AM +0200, Ulf Samuelsson wrote :
While AT91bootstrap supports booting linux, this is real minimal support. Everything is hard-wired so for development it really sucks. It is really only useful for production work. I personally never used this capability.
This functionality is pretty new in AT91boostrap, and the Atmel (non) presence in the mailing list is an older problem.
While I no longer work for Atmel, I have a feeling that the problem is as follows:
Users are using the Atmel version of U-Boot, not mainstream. If not using the Atmel version, then they maybe using a build system like OpenEmbedded where u-boot is built as a part of the build process and people have very little incentive in modifying that part
There is very little incentive at Atmel to upgrade because
- Patches provided by Atmel are ignored.
- Patches are applied to mainline which keeps breaking the AT91 support.
- All possible fixes to boot problem are rejected (discussion with
Haavard). 4. It is considered more important to have a "clean" implementation, than a working implementation. (Choice of NOR Flash Driver)
Atmel does not want to continuously spend effort on unbreaking other peoples work.
Problems are not fixed in the mainline due to problem (1). Instead the problems are fixed in the buildsystem and it is not considered worthwhile to submit such fixes to the mailinglist.
The action by the project to "solve" the problem by removing the boards from the MAKEALL scripts and also to remove BSPs is not encouraging.
There used to be a rule that patches should not break board support, but that rule seems to have gone down the drains.
The Atmel code is (IIRC) based on 0.3.4 so it is very old, so an update is really needed but before U-Boot becomes "developer-friendly", I doubt that will happen. If the project wants to have Atmel "on-board", then fixing problem (1) is key.
Would it be possible to get a list of what is not working on mainline but is working in ATMEL's version ? or at least some pointers. It seems to be working well on my board. I'm really interested in getting mainline working well.
I know there is not much interest in the AT91 boards now but I would really like to see that issue fixed.
Regards,