[U-Boot] new board with common code

[Kumar Gala]

On Jan 14, 2011, at 5:39 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> Dear Fabian Cenedese,
> 
> In message <5.2.0.9.1.20110114115035.036b5778 at localhost> you wrote:
>> 
>> I'm adding a new board. It's very similar to freescale's P2020DS, that's
>> why I used this code as starting point. The problem is now that it still
>> uses some code from board/freescale/common. At the first try this
>> didn't get built and therefore I get link errors. What's the preferred
>> way in this case?
>> 
>> - Is it allowed to use sources inside another board/vendor?
> 
> It is allowed, but not recommended. You are running the risk that the
> board vendor may make arbitrary changes to his board code, which may
> work fine for him, but break your board.  And you cannot even blame
> him, because he probably is not even aware that this code gets used by
> others who rely on it.
> 
> It is recommended to move such code to a common directory.
> 
>> - Is it better to link to it or should I just copy the files into our
>>  vendor or board directory?
> 
> Please do not copy any files.  Duplication of code is the worst that
> can be done in such a szenario.
> 
>> - If it's okay to link to objects from another place, how can I
>>  adjust the makefiles/config.mk so the freescale's common
>>  lib is built as well? I know makefiles but u-boot is quite high
>>  level usage.
> 
> Before we go into details we should define a strategy.  Can you please
> be specific: which exact files are you talking about?
> 
> Then we can dicuss with the Freescale guys how to handle this
> situation.

Agreed, if we know what code is common we could see about how best to refactor it for sharing.

- k