[U-Boot] [PATCH v4 00/19] sunxi: sync H3, H5, A64 DTs from mainline Linux

[Mark Kettenis]

> From: =?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Przywara?= <andre.przywara at arm.com>
> Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2018 12:51:50 +0100
> 
> On 02/04/18 12:20, Mark Kettenis wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
> >> This feature make U-Boot to have full Linux dts inside, Can't we
> >> implement automatic-boot-of-os distro to grab Linux dtb during
> >> commands stage like other distro does? Because this make few
> >> development struggles for U-Boot project like (few of the comments are
> >> repeated from previous mail, but I'm trying to group them all)
> >> - Unnecessary to maintain nodes which are not required for bootloader
> >> and which doesn't have proper dt drivers.
> >> - It becomes more patches for each-and-every sync.
> >> - We can compare the sync with Linux dt and simply apply on U-Boot
> >> which look not good to project growing.
> >> - Increase size(though it 10KB increase) it becomes unnecessary size
> >> from U-Boot point-of-view
> > 
> > This is not just about booting Linux.  And even if it was, it means
> > that you can only boot on hardware for which a full device tree is
> > included in your distro.  So a new board that comes with a usable
> > U-Boot in SPI flash still won't work since the right device tree isn't
> > there.
> 
> Ah right, I didn't even mention SPI flash in that thread. Thanks!
> 
> Out of curiosity: what OS are you thinking about? Collecting trophies
> here ;-) I tried the FreeBSD-current installer the other day, and it
> worked pretty well.

OpenBSD.  ARMv8-wise, our support for Allwinner A64/H5 and Rockchip
RK3399 is pretty decent these days and Rockchip RK3328 is coming along
as well.  And I'm working on Marvell 8040 support.  There is support
for ARMv7 as well which includes many of the older Allwinner SoCs.

We don't have the resources to build images for all the different
boards that are out there though, which probably is the biggest
stumbling block for getting OpenBSD to run.  Our bootloader is UEFI,
so with a recent enough U-Boot in flash the default install.fs image
should just work.  It does on Rock64!  Otherwise you have to know the
magic to write the U-Boot image at the right location into that image
to make it boot.

Cheers,

Mark