[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/4] rockchip: Reduce prerequisites from the host

[Dr. Philipp Tomsich]

Vicente,

> On 18 Jun 2018, at 22:07, Vicente Bergas <vicencb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:51:13 +0800, kever.yang at rock-chips.com wrote:
>> (snip)
>> I just not understand why remove the dependency on python is so important,
>> there already many modules depend on python.
> 
> On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:57:48 +0800, kever.yang at rock-chips.com wrote:
>> (snip)
>> Could you share why you don't want to use python, can convert the
>> script to C?
> 
> Hi Kever,
> there are several reasons, here are the ones I can think of:
> 1.- Python is a ~100MB weight dependency.
> 2.- Because of (1) I don not have it installed by default.
> 3.- My Linux distribution of choice defaults to python3 but
>     u-boot requires 'python' to be python2.
> 4.- "Shall use C language whenever possible."
>     http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot/DesignRequirements
> 5.- It is not just a dependency on what needs to be installed
>     on the host, is also a dependency on which programming
>     languages u-boot's contributors need to know about.
>     So, it can be considered an entry barrier.

Given that most of the recent FDT infrastructure (e.g. tools/dtoc) and
binman are Python, the overall opinion on Python seems to have
changed (and no-one bothered to update the Wiki).

That said: the original python-implementation (i.e. the .py tool in
the rockchip subdirectory) is a bit unfortunate as well, as any processing
of binaries to build a final bootable image should nowadays be included
in binman.

> I don not have strong feelings on this getting merged and certainly
> will not get upset if it does not. It is entirely your decision.
> 
> I have submitted this patch series mostly "for your information" and
> because Philipp thought that it "looks worthwhile”:

Just for the record: I want to have this patch in the mailing-list archive,
so it is archived and can be found by anyone working on this aspect
of our bootup in the future.

I still stand by my initial assessment that it’s worthwhile to not lose this
info and make sure it’s archived ;-)

Thanks,
Philipp.

> On Fri, 1 Jun 2018 00:37:17 +0200, philipp.tomsich at
> theobroma-systems.com wrote:
>> (snip)
>>> On 1 Jun 2018, at 00:28, Vicente Bergas <vicencb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> (snip)
>>> SPL_FIT_GENERATOR and SPL_OF_PLATDATA require python.
>>> In order to remove this dependency:
>>> 1.- I have written a C version for SPL_FIT_GENERATOR.
>>> 2.- Disabled SPL_OF_PLATDATA, it just works.
>>> 
>>> MKIMAGE_DTC_PATH requires dtc in the PATH.
>>> In order to remove this dependency, I have changed it to use the built-in one.
>>> 
>>> If there is interest in those changes, I can post the full patch.
>> 
>> Please submit a patch--it certainly looks worthwhile.
> 
> Regards,
>  Vicenç.