[U-Boot-Users] TI DaVinci merge, was: uboot custodian question

[ksi at koi8.net]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007, Dirk Behme wrote:

> Nishanth Menon wrote:
>> Ksi,
>> 
>> ksi at koi8.net stated on 8/1/2007 11:39 PM:
>> 
>>> What work? It's been 3 months since I've submitted patches for fully
>>> working
>>> U-Boot on TMS320DM6446  platform. I do already have some patches to
> those
>>> patches. We do run it for something like 6 months on various boards.
> What
>>> work are you talking about, man?
>>> 
>>> I'm really really angry, nobody seems to care... What else should I
> do to
>>> get the _PERFECTLY WORKING_ port into the main tree? What's the
> problem?
>> 
>> My apologies on not following up mails in the uboot list.. I was not
>> aware of your work.. but I do know that OMAP24xx and OMAP34xx patches
>> need a lot of rework.. I could be wrong to imagine that these could
>> share some files with Davinci and viceversa... I can see the patch
> here
>> in the ARM  queue: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/PatchStatus (posted
> on
>> 2007-05-08) maybe Peter can comment on his plans of merger..
>
> Let us start to get an overview regarding TI DaVinci patches floating
> around. 
> Sorry if anything is wrong or missing, please correct then.
>
> First, I think we should split the discussion for OMAP24xx and OMAP34xx
> from 
> DaVinci.
>
> So, looking at DaVinci, I can at least identify three patchsets floating
> around, not sure if and what the relationship is between them.
>
> 1. (Original?) patch from Ksi:
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/27603
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/27604
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/27605
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/28314
>
> I think these are the patches mentioned in
>
> http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/PatchStatus
>
> 2.Patch from Philip Balister:
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/29399
>
> http://www.balister.org/~balister/u-boot-sffsdr.patch
>
> 3. Patch from Ivan Tonchev:
>
> http://linux.omap.com/pipermail/davinci-linux-open-source/2007-July/0036
> 45.html
> http://linux.omap.com/pipermail/davinci-linux-open-source/2007-July/0036
> 52.html
>
> I haven't looked at all of these.
>
> A short discussion with Philip Balister showed some basic requirements
> for a 
> merge candidate: At least support for TMS320DM6446 based DV-EVM with 
> default/basic NOR and EMIF configuration. Further, it would be nice if
> the 
> initial work is easily extendable to machines beyond the EVM. May be we
> need 
> to split the processor stuff off from the board stuff so that it is easy
> to 
> add additional boards later.

If you take a look at my patch you can find that it works at least on 3
different boards. It has a separate CPU directory and it is very easy to
extend for a new board (as a matter of fact it should work on any board with
minor changes if any.) We do run it on 2 additional boards since it's been
posted.

Also it is _FULLY_ working port, with all the peripherals properly supported
and DV-EVM is just _A_ target, not _THE_ target. Both NOR and NAND flash
supported. For NAND both small and large page devices supported with full
hardware-assisted ECC fully compatible with Linux MTD implementation.

There is a bug in large page NAND ECC code though that makes U-Boot hang
after showing detected NAND Flash info. That came from TI kernel code and it
is fixed long ago but I can not send a patch for it because there is nothing
I can make that patch against. That's why I keep pushing for inclusion it
into the main tree so I would be able to send a fix.

I do also have an initial bootloader (UBL in TI's terms) that allows for
programming a virgin system and works as NAND UBL booting _ANY_ user app
(including U-Boot) from NAND, both small and large page. It's nothing like
that TI's weirdo with dotnet or whatever and Windo$e. And it makes automated
programming of freshly manufactured boards very easy.

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