[U-Boot-Users] FDT intentions in u-boot

[Haavard Skinnemoen]

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:29:28 -0400
Jerry Van Baren <gerald.vanbaren at ge.com> wrote:

> I would not advocate embedding the FDT blob in u-boot but, if I were
> to do so, I would use the dtc to generate an assembly language output 
> (actually, a lot of define byte statements) and then compile that in
> the u-boot build.

Why not just generate a binary file (possibly compressed) and suck it
into an assembly file using .incbin?

> A better approach IMHO (subject to change) is to burn the FDT blob
> into a separate flash area so it can be updated later without
> rebuilding u-boot or downloading it via TFTP.  Obviously, this would
> be an engineering tradeoff and /your/ best choice for your situation
> is quite likely different from someone else's choice for their
> (different) situation.

Yes, having a mutable device tree probably makes more sense for a
development board. But embedding it in the u-boot binary could save
some space in the "production" image. Is it possible to support both?

I don't know all that much about FDT, so I could be way off. I would
like to try it out with avr32 at some point though, after all the
basics are in place.

Håvard