Dear Peter Tyser,
In message 1221148523.11226.449.camel@localhost.localdomain you wrote:
Does U-Boot accept new drivers/board support patches (ie new features which can't regress) outside of merge windows, or only bug fixes?
Like in Linux, only bug fixes are accepted.
There is no such thing as new code that "can't regress". Please see also the recent discussion about this on LKML and Linus' clear statements: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/104943/focus=104951 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/104943/focus=104945
My understanding for the Linux kernel is that self-contained drivers/features are sometimes accepted after the merge window as they shouldn't cause the kernel to regress as no "old" code is using them.
That used to be the case in Linux, and it turned out that it didn't work that well. We don't do this here.
I have patches for a new MPC8572-based board and was wondering if I should go ahead and send them out now, or wait until the next release in ~a month. I see other non-bugfix patches still being sent to the mailing list which gave me a glimmer of hope of getting the changes in the upcoming 2008.10 release:)
You better wait a while. Especially Jean-Christophe's Makefile patches will go in soon (as last bigger change in this release cycle) and these would certainly break your patch.
Once Jean-Christophe's Makefile patches have been applied (and any problems caused by them fixed), I ill issue -rc2, and then probably create a "next" branch. This might be used as a base for things like your patches.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk