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authorDenis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>2021-01-07 00:56:11 +0100
committerDenis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>2021-07-05 20:17:21 +0200
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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>
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++------+
+| 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.