[U-Boot] [U-Boot-Board-Maintainers] [U-Boot-Custodians] [RFC] Eliminate boards not using CONFIG_DM=y

[Lukasz Majewski]

Hi Tom,

> On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 09:11:51AM +0100, Marek Vasut wrote:
> > On 11/26/19 12:16 AM, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:  
> > > Dear maintainers,  
> > 
> > Hi,
> >   
> > > we have been trying to move to the driver model for several years
> > > now. Starting in 2018 we have added warnings to the Makefile that
> > > boards not supporting the driver model will be eliminated. Still
> > > 24 % of the configuration files have not been converted and do
> > > not even use CONFIG_DM=y.
> > > 
> > > If we want to get rid of legacy drivers, at some point we have to
> > > remove the 347 configuration files in the list below not using
> > > the driver model.
> > > 
> > > I suggest to do this directly after the release of v2020.01
> > > scheduled January 6th.
> > > 
> > > This should not stop the maintainers from reinserting the boards
> > > after conversion to the driver model.  
> > 
> > Some boards just cannot accommodate this DM stuff. For those boards,
> > it's just bloat without any useful added value. Hence, these boards
> > would be removed because they cannot accommodate arbitrary bloat.
> > This makes U-Boot not-so-universal bootloader anymore, but rather a
> > bloated one.
> > 
> > I don't think we can force boards out or impose DM on everyone
> > unless we can solve this bloat issue first.  
> 
> As someone who was involved in creating this DM stuff, do you have
> some ideas on addressing things?  Given that you're responsible for a
> number of these platforms and can test out some ideas on them, what
> are you suggesting?
> 

I can speak of some i.MX28 board(s). If there is a will one can try to
use OF_PLATDATA without the full blown support of FDT (patches recently
added to not include some not necessary stuff).

(The board which uses this approach still waits for SPL_DM_GPIO
definition in Kconfig to be re-posted to ML)

However, I don't know if this would work for all kinds of _bloat_
mentioned by Marek.


Best regards,

Lukasz Majewski

--

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