[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/9] Switch bcm283x platform to use OF_CONTROL

[Eric Anholt]

Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> writes:

>> Am 05.10.2016 um 18:48 schrieb Fabian Vogt <fvogt at suse.com>:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Am Mittwoch, 5. Oktober 2016, 09:54:46 CEST schrieb Stephen Warren:
>>> On 09/26/2016 06:26 AM, Fabian Vogt wrote:
>>>> This patch series modifies the used drivers to work with OF_CONTROL
>>>> and switches the board code and configs to use it.
>>>> The added device trees are directly from the linux kernel tree
>>>> and can thus be used for booting the (upstream) kernel.
>>> 
>>> Is there a user-visible or developer-visible benefit to this change? In 
>>> general, converting to use DT to instantiate devices simply ends up 
>>> using more code (and hence complexity and time) to get to the exact same 
>>> state afterwards.
>> 
>> There are various reasons, like:
>> 
>> - The device tree describes the platform, so it can also be used by the
>>  linux kernel for configuration (no separate dtb needed)
>
> With a bit of lobbying, we might even be able to get a working dt from
> the rpi firmware. That again would enable awesome things like hat
> support in u-boot :).

I can't imagine the firmware handing any DT off to the kernel other than
the one that's being shipped from whatever kernel is being loaded.
Being able to update the DT in lockstep with the kernel is very much
part of their process.  (This makes linux insisting that DT is ABI that
must maintain backwards compat quite painful for upstreaming)

Given that the firmware already hands the kernel's DT back to the
kernel, it seems like we should be able to load the kernel's DT too if
we wanted that.
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