[U-Boot] Fix for a build ?

[Sylvain Lamontagne]

Dear Wolfgang Denk,

> We have about 650 Makefiles in the current U-Boot source tree; the top
> level Makefile alone has seen 371 commits since v1.3.4
[snip]
> I am not in a position to remember each and every of these changes, or
> their potential impact on building in SMP configurations.
>
I understand that one person cannot remember the awesome lot of work
that have been done since 1.3.4 and that many fundamental changes
occurred during these two years.

> I gave you  quick answer: use git bisect to find out which commit
> makes a difference for your build system. Of course this requires that
> you have some build target that is supported in mainline, and that
> shows the same problem like your out-of-tree port.
I'm sorry I did not see the email related to this before sending the
other one. This is a perfect suggestion and I'll probably setup a
build configuration for the lite5200 board that is on my desk to see
if my problem show itself.

[snip]

> You seem to fail to understand how a free software project like U-Boot
> works. U-Boot is very easy to upgrade - we take great care not to
> break support for any of the supported boards, and we accept even
> exotic boards and include these into the mainline tree, even if there
> is most likely no other user ever.
>
> So if you want to be able to upgrade easily just make sure your code
> is part of the mainline distribution.
Ok, I am now in the seat of someone that could push the idea of
putting the next platform we develop into the mainline. But other
MBA/Finance/Manager persons that really take decisions will surely ask
my department why I would like to give internal informations of our
product in a way that any of our competitors could get it easily. How
could I give them an answer that would be aligned with the philosophy
?

I understand how free software project works, I have participate in
some and even worked to revive an old dead project
(http://datavibe.net/~essiene/ale/) into something up-to-date while I
was at University. (http://sonia.etsmtl.ca/index.php?id=553)
I've also participate in some kernel janitor task in my free time
because I care about open source and I'm passionate by technology. I
was a quite active member in the french forum of gentoo to help new
comers and find solutions to problems. I care about people and I want
the people around me to improve as best as they can.

> I did not intend to be rude, but I have to admit that your attitude
> is not exactly in line how community projects like this work.
Then I'm sorry, but for me this project sounds like it is directed by
a bunch of elitist who would not accept someone that don't already
know how the project work. Criticizing and judging questions asked by
people that may never have work on or with  something like U-Boot
before. If you are afraid of getting to much dumb questions then this
means that the documentation and the FAQ from the U-Boot website could
be improve in a way that new comers would find easily the informations
they need.

> I don't have the time to answer requests like yours in long prosa -
Then you can simply skip the question, this mailing list have surely
more than hundred persons that can answer if they think they could
help. I don't think anybody ask that you answer to all emails, this is
surely an extremely huge time consuming task.

>  Maybe you want to read
> http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
And maybe you want to read
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9y9de/eric_raymonds_famous_how_to_ask_questions_the/

Have a nice day

Sylvain