Porting feature to ancient U-boot V.S porting ancient hardware code patches to new U-boot

[Simon Glass]

Hi,

On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 at 14:41, Mr Academia Euforia
<euforiamracademia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm working on certain feature to be added to ONIE that is running on
> Broadcom's Helix4 -based network switch. Part of the task is to add FIT
> signature signing to U-boot versions supported by ONIE. ONIE as part of the
> build process uses uboot snapshots, and applies platform patches on top of
> it.
>
> The list of U-boot snapshots to pick from is as follows:
> 2012.10, 2013.01.01, 2015.10, 2018.03
>
> My platform by default, uses the oldest, 2012.10 and this version does not
> support FIT signatures.
>
> I was thinking how to address that, and came up with two solutions, neither
> being better (in my mind):
>
> 1) Create patch set based on the difference between more recent U-boot
> versions and 2012 that would be focused around fit image signatures,
>
> 2) Pick 2018.03 as code base.
>
> Problems I see:
>
> Ad 1) I can't find any repository that would contain commits from that far
> away history-wise. Did U-boot project even use any public repository in
> 2012 ? General problem here is how to prepare patchset,
>
> Ad 2) The problem is that platform code patches don't apply on more recent
> U-boot versions. Some of the files no longer exist, some code has been
> refactored, etc.
>
> Could you guys offer me any sort of advise on how to approach this ?

Git history goes back to 2003.

One way would be to start from scratch with v2023.07 and do a new port
for your board. After that many years, a lot has changed.

After that, you could consider upstreaming it so your code can keep up
with updates.

>
> Best regards

Regards,
Simon