[v2] doc: Begin adding a best practices document for board ports

Tom Rini trini at konsulko.com
Tue Aug 8 22:36:16 CEST 2023


To help guide developers down the right path, begin a document that
lists some best practices to follow when creating a new board port.

Signed-off-by: Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com>
---
Cc: Heinrich Schuchardt <heinrich.schuchardt at canonical.com>
Changes in v2:
- Apply feedback from Heinrich
---
 doc/develop/board_best_practices.rst | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 doc/develop/index.rst                |  1 +
 2 files changed, 27 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 doc/develop/board_best_practices.rst

diff --git a/doc/develop/board_best_practices.rst b/doc/develop/board_best_practices.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b012ac59e232
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/develop/board_best_practices.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+:
+
+Best Practices for Board Ports
+==============================
+
+In addition to the regular best practices such as using :doc:`checkpatch` and
+following :doc:`docstyle` and :doc:`codingstyle` there are some things which
+are specific to creating a new board port.
+
+* Implement :doc:`bootstd` to ensure that most operating systems will be
+  supported by the platform.
+
+* The platform defconfig file must be generated via `make savedefconfig`.
+
+* The Kconfig and Kbuild infrastructure supports using "fragments" that can be
+  used to apply changes on top of a defconfig file.  These can be useful for
+  many things such as:
+
+  * Supporting different firmware locations (e.g. eMMC, SD, QSPI).
+
+  * Multiple board variants when runtime detection is not desired.
+
+  * Supporting different build types such as production and development.
+
+  Kconfig fragments should reside in the board directory itself rather than in
+  the top-level `configs/` directory.
diff --git a/doc/develop/index.rst b/doc/develop/index.rst
index 263d404b4ca8..5b230d0321f2 100644
--- a/doc/develop/index.rst
+++ b/doc/develop/index.rst
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ General
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
 
+   board_best_practices
    codingstyle
    designprinciples
    docstyle
-- 
2.34.1



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