incompatible device trees between u-boot and linux

[Michael Walle]

Hi,

I noticed that there is a fallback to the u-boot device tree for linux
(esp. EFI boot) if no other device tree was found, see [1]. It seems 
this
is working fine for imx devices, for example, where you can just boot a
stock installer iso via EFI. It will just work and it is quite a nice
feature as a fallback.

Now for the layerscape architecture, the ls1028a in my case, things are
more difficult because the bindings differ between u-boot and linux - 
one
which comes to mind is DSA and ethernet.

Which begs the general question, is it encouraged to have both bindings
diverge? To me it seems, that most bindings in u-boot are ad-hoc and 
there
is no real review or alignment but just added as needed, which is ok if
they are local to u-boot. But since they are nowadays passed to linux
(by default!) I'm not so sure anymore.

OTOH The whole structure around a .dts{,i} and -u-boot.dtsi looks like
they should (could?) be shared between linux and u-boot.

-michael

[1] 
https://elixir.bootlin.com/u-boot/v2021.10-rc2/source/common/board_r.c#L471