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author | Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> | 2021-01-07 00:56:11 +0100 |
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committer | Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> | 2021-07-05 20:17:21 +0200 |
commit | 89ab0d27c99ce4899829ab45001c0955db1149ab (patch) | |
tree | 9735cdba5977682103614a1c99992f1c1009bed7 /libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt | |
parent | 5f989c87ef5056135de96820f697d825980d13e3 (diff) | |
download | abslibre-89ab0d27c99ce4899829ab45001c0955db1149ab.tar.gz abslibre-89ab0d27c99ce4899829ab45001c0955db1149ab.tar.bz2 abslibre-89ab0d27c99ce4899829ab45001c0955db1149ab.zip |
libre: uboot4extlinux-sunxi: lower maintenance costs
- We can now do cross builds of u-boot:
- We can now more easily work on the package as we don't need
an ARM computer for that anymore.
- It also enable people already using Parabola on x86 to more
easily install, test, or repair u-boot for an ARM computer
as users can simply install it on microSD cards without
needing to use ARM chroots.
- There is now an install script to install u-boot:
- It makes things easier for users as it is more similar to
grub-install than dd commands.
- It also does many checks at the same time to avoid data loss.
- The commands to split packages are now shared between all
package_ functions. This lower maintenance.
- How to add a new board has been made more clear.
Comparison with other distributions (for consistency):
- u-boot doesn't have anything to handle the installation and
update of u-boot binaries if UEFI is not used.
- Debian has an u-boot-install-sunxi script which handles way more
cases than what I wrote (it even handles GPT and so on and even
has a manual), but there seems to be no tools to update u-boot.
- Openembedded doesn't seem to have anything special in
the u-boot recipe in openembedded-core
Signed-off-by: Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt | 39 |
1 files changed, 39 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt b/libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..1d8e08c63 --- /dev/null +++ b/libre/uboot4extlinux-sunxi/TODO.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ ++------+ +| TODO | ++------+ +- We could add automatic updates. It would require a bit of + work: + - u-boot has code to detect images. We could write a tool that + reuses that code to detect Allwinner eGON images. + See the 0001-Add-tool-to-dump-sunxi-images.patch for inspiration + on how to do that. + - Once done that tool could then be leveraged for detecting + u-boot installations and updating the u-boot images with a + pacman hook for devices that are booted. + - We could also check the devicetree to make sure we are + running on the right device. + - For chroots we could somehow detect that we are in a chroot + and find if there is an underlying block device, and upgrade + u-boot there. + - In any case we need to be careful not to break other computers: + some x86 laptops have eMMC too, and most of the time theses + eMMC also contains the BIOS and/or UEFI, so we don't want to + erase that. We also don't want to erase the laptop filesytems + either. +- We need to build some infrastructure for users to report working + boards and mention it here and on the wiki for adding official + support for boards. We could for instance do something as simple + as possible like open a new bug tracker specially for that and + just reference that in the wiki for instance. +- We also need to make dtb fragment work in u-boot to support more + use cases and possibly also package popular dtb fragment for the + beaglebone black. +- In addition we could then leverage that to build an image for + the beaglebone black (or other boards) for flashing Libreboot. + This way Libreboot would benefit from an FSDG compatible image + that is also maintained by an upstream distribution. +- We could also look maing an u-boot package that has UEFI compatibility + and also bundle GRUB with it. This way we could simplify the installation + instructions by leverage users knowledge about GRUB and also potentially + investigate if we could leverage the UEFI standard for easily upgrading + that u-boot+UEFI+grub image. |