In-tree Python tools (patman, buildman, binman, etc.)

[Simon Glass]

Hi,

On Mon, 4 May 2026 at 06:16, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> As you know, I maintain several tools which are part of the U-Boot tree.
>
> Tom has previously suggested that it would be better to move patman
> out of the U-Boot tree, e.g. to its own Github project. It is a
> general tool which can be used with Linux and other
> mailing-list/patchwork-based projects. I have never been keen on
> taking on the extra effort required, but I've recently added more
> features and am wondering whether now might be a good time to do this.
>
> Buildman is quite obviously designed specifically for U-Boot. I have
> made some improvements recently (a large code refactor and distributed
> builds). I would like to push those changes to mainline. Do people
> think it should be in a separate tree somewhere?
>
> Binman was written with U-Boot in mind but supports other projects
> (such as Zephyr). It is generic enough that it could be separated. The
> impact would be harder code review.
>
> We also have smaller things like qconfig (which I have substantially
> rewritten to make it fast) and dtoc, which is very tailored to U-Boot.
>
> What do people think? Of all of these, patman would be the easiest to
> move, with the least impact on existing workflows.

Are there any actualy patman users on the list who have an opinion? So
far the replies are from people who don't actually use it :-)

Barring any other comments, I'm going to try to set up a new project
on Github. Re u_boot_pylib, the easiest thing is to duplicate it,
particularly as the newer version includes claude libraries not useful
for mainline.

Regards,
Simon