[U-Boot] [PATCH 1/2] imx: mx6sxsabresd: drop SPL support

[Stefano Babic]

Hi everybody,

On 11/05/2017 11:29, Peng Fan wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jagan Teki [mailto:jagannadh.teki at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 5:22 PM
>> To: Peng Fan <peng.fan at nxp.com>
>> Cc: Stefano Babic <sbabic at denx.de>; u-boot at lists.denx.de; Fabio Estevam
>> <fabio.estevam at nxp.com>
>> Subject: Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH 1/2] imx: mx6sxsabresd: drop SPL support
>>
>> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Peng Fan <peng.fan at nxp.com> wrote:
>>> We never use it, so drop the support.
>>
>> Do you have any memory constraints? just want to know why we drop the
>> feature.
> 
> SPL is not supported by NXP software releases.

Well, I can understand this, but U-Boot is a community project..

> And I do not want to maintain
> the spl code, mainly ddr part. Internal, we have a ddr team to work out
> ddr initialization script which could pass memory stress test and fine tuned.

I have already written that I understand the position of a board
maintainer and there are projects more suitable for SPL and other for
u-boot.imx. Fine. I am not forcing people to do in a way or in another
way, I am limiting to show the possibilities.

Anyway, NXP boards are mostly evaluation boards and they are often taken
as reference from other people to start a porting of their custom board.
And then, developers will not completely rely on NXP releases - and they
have to better understand when a solution is better as the other one. If
just a solution is offered, they take that one because they cannot see
an alternative one.

If I have to say the whole truth, pushing hexadecimal tables to mainline
is not the best way to understand what is happening under the curtains.
I am not reviewing the DCD tables, or I had to check each bit if this is
correct or not. And for a board developer, who wants to port the own
custom board, is much more clear to check number of row / columns for a
RAM chip as done with SPL as with DCD - not everybody has a whole team
bothering about RAM setup. I think that one goal of a community project
as U-Boot should be also to show and make understandable what is done.
Peng is saying the same (but with another goal): someone pushed to me a
blob (=not easy to check), I will simply use it.

I understand the point but I would be happier if we find a way (script,
whatever, ...) that generates the SPL code from the DCD table to
maintain the setup synchronized instead of dropping SPL.

Best regards,
Stefano Babic

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