[RFC] imx8mm-evk: Generate a bootable flash.bin again

[Frieder Schrempf]

On 18.08.21 08:36, Frieder Schrempf wrote:
> On 18.08.21 07:19, Heiko Schocher wrote:
>> Hello Fabio,
>>
>> On 18.08.21 03:44, Fabio Estevam wrote:
>>> Hi Heiko,
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 12:56 AM Heiko Schocher <hs at denx.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am unsure here, if it makes sense to overwrite flash.bin with the
>>>> binary which contains SPL and u-boot.itb. May others want to use
>>>> them (as I currently use them for signing them)
>>>
>>> I thought about that too. Frieder suggested I use a different name for
>>> the SPL file, such as spl.bin.
>>>
>>> I am concerned that renaming flash.bin to spl.bin may break i.MX8MM
>>> targets that do not use binman, such as the verdin-imx8mm board.
>>
>> Hmm... okay, but I do not understand why spl code is named flash.bin
>> than?
>>
>> spl.bin seems better to me.
>>
>>>> Why not imx-boot as image name as in NXP sources?
>>>
>>> NXP U-Boot also generates the final binary called "flash.bin"
>>
>> What do you mean with "final binary"? The binary which contains
>> SPL and u-boot (and all other needed binaries)?
>>
>> If so, is this really called flash.bin? So *same* name as "SPL only"
>> code? I could not believe this...
>>
>> NXP code does this not for all imx8 derivates, see comment:
>>
>> https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FFreescale%2Fmeta-freescale%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Frecipes-bsp%2Fu-boot%2Fu-boot-fslc_2021.07.bb%23L31&data=04%7C01%7Cfrieder.schrempf%40kontron.de%7C16c905859c304ef28b2408d962128945%7C8c9d3c973fd941c8a2b1646f3942daf1%7C0%7C0%7C637648654014439808%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=ulgHHxm9VozahAL9AjXrX6bYLBatsBvPQIxh1xziaU8%3D&reserved=0
>>
>> But yes, the container is named "flash.bin"...
>>
>>> My main motivation for sending this RFC patch is to avoid imx8mm-evk
>>> breakage when people upgrade
>>> to U-Boor 2021.07.
>>
>> U-Boot 2021.07 is broken? Or do you mean 2021.10?
>>
>> Ah, *now* I got it commit "8996e6b7c6a1" introduced a SPL based "flash.bin"
>> through arch/arm/dts/imx8mm-evk-u-boot.dtsi:
>>
>> +       flash {
>> +               mkimage {
>> +                       args = "-n spl/u-boot-spl.cfgout -T imx8mimage -e 0x7e1000";
>> +
>> +                       blob {
>> +                               filename = "u-boot-spl-ddr.bin";
>> +                       };
>> +               };
>> +       };
>>
>> -> now we have a "flash.bin" with SPL only code and a "flash.bin"
>> Makefile target which produces "flash.bin" which is a container
>> of SPL, U-Boot, dtb, atf, ... and may much more binaries...
>>
>> :-(
> 
> 
> Exactly, that's the main problem.
> 
>>
>> Added Peng to cc, as he did this conversion for imx8mm-evk-u-boot.dtsi
>>
>>> Prior to 2021.07: only flash.bin was required. Yocto recipe, for
>>> example, will no longer produce a bootable image
>>> after the upgrade to 2021.07. This is the breakage I would like to avoid.
>>
>> I vote for renaming flash.bin (in SPL case) to spl.bin. It seems to
>> me there are many imx8*-u-boot.dtsi file now which use this part:
> 
> Yes, I think we should introduce a common dtsi file with a binman configuration that uses spl.bin for the SPL image and flash.bin for the final image. Then we could switch all boards to use this config step by step afterwards.

Actually this would require changing the SPL image name for all boards, or if that's possible with binman, rename the flash.bin SPL image to spl.bin, before building the final image.