Community meeting April 8th 2025 (was: Re: [ANN] U-Boot v2025.04 released)

[Caleb Connolly]

Hi Everyone,

On 4/8/25 00:00, Tom Rini wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> It's release day and here's v2025.04. We had some last minute issues
> reported, but then also resolved.  I want to thank everyone that's
> contributed to this release, not just in terms of code, but
> documentation, testing and otherwise ensuring things go as smoothly as
> they can.
> 
> In terms of a changelog,
> git log --merges v2025.04-rc5..v2025.04
> contains what I've pulled since the last RC or:
> git log --merges v2025.01..v2025.04
> for changes since the last full release. As always, more details in
> pull requests (or the tags referenced by them) will result in more
> details here.
> 
> As is becoming reguarly scheduled, we have a community meeting tomorrow
> (for me anyhow). The meeting details itself are:
> https://meet.google.com/btj-wgcg-euw
> April 7th, 2025. 9am (GMT -06:00)
> 
> To join by phone:
> https://meet.google.com/tel/btj-wgcg-euw?pin=3D1307528552322&hs=3D1
> 
> The meeting can be added to your calendar via the link on
> https://www.u-boot.org/


Here are the notes from the meeting, please feel free to clarify any 
points I might have missed or gotten wrong. Thanks Tom for chairing.

# U-Boot Community meeting April 8 2025

* Tom intro: next merged into master, small delay
* Heinrich: ACPI has regular regressions due to lack of testing in CI
   * tom proposes adding another QEMU defconfig with ACPI enabled
* Heinrich: Ubuntu images being used in CI are getting too old
   * tom: has a patch to update to GCC 14
   * tom: opened an issue, Simon to investigate (link?)
   * tom: already tested new GCC/LLVM, no new warnings.
   * tom: will rebuild docker container this week, adding byacc for 
binman to enable IMX8 testing

* state of Simons patches re: bootflow/EFI/standard boot
   * issue with standard boot that the EFI bootmgr option is always at 
the top
   * heinrich: proposes a new virtual device that can be ordered anywhere
   * heinrich will investigate in the next few weeks

* tom: modernising the Makefile
   * tom: which platforms are still using old stuff? will consider 
disabling or removing boards
   * tom: e.g. watchdog (deadline 2019), legacy i2c (deadline 2022.04)

* caleb: FdtFile revival
   * context: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/36835
   * would enable picking DTB matching your kernel version
   * heinrich: robh thinks we should match on compatible instead. Simon 
also agrees
   * heinrich: fine with adding this patch
   * simon: significant harm - compatible is the only right way to 
match, anything else is a workaround
   * caleb/tom: agrees in theory, but in practise this isn't what we 
witness. Having a compressed blob of all DTs would be ideal, and 
compresses well, but nobody is doing this..
   * heinrich: U-Boot is also not the only firmware, we can't expect 
EDK2 to start shipping this.
   * Ilias: Agrees, best of the bad options
   * simon: what would be the right solution?
     * caleb: have the kernel emit a file with compatible -> fdtfile 
lookups since that's faster to read
   * Bryan Brattlof: what about overlays?
     * caleb: probably you have a more vertically integrated system
     * bryan: customers want yocto and a redhat image that works ootb

* tom/simon: bloblist:
   * tom: if bloblist is enabled it MUST have the DT, set the "mandatory 
passage flag"
   * simon: OF_BLOBLIST means DT is in bloblist
   * tom: it's a bad idea to divorce standard passage handoff from 
bloblist, but if it eases some issues for now and we can revisit in a 
~year that might be best
   * ilias: we have discussed this before. doesn't think OF_BLOBLIST 
should exist, because the info is discoverable at runtime.
   * ilias: we have a standard (firmware handoff), why do we need 
another implementation?
     * tom: hoping to reconcile over time between fw handoff and bloblist
   * tom: to re-iterate what Simon said: dt should be either in 
bloblist, embedded, or discovered through board specific means. Need to 
avoid conflating consuming bloblist and creating bloblist (e.g. in SPL).
     * tom: in SPL, if we don't have a bloblist, we don't need a config 
option.
     * tom: we should remove BLOBLIST_FIXED
   * simon: we can get rid of BLOBLIST_FIXED if we have a register 
hand-off firmware (x86)
   * out of time... Tom ok to add OF_BLOBLIST if we remove 
BLOBLIST_FIXED. Hopes that in ~1 year we'll all agree that we want the 
same thing...


> 
> The merge window is formally open again. I will be merging next in to
> master shortly. The v2025.07 release is scheduled for Monday, July 7th,
> 2025 and the merge window will close and -rc1 will be released on the
> 28th of April, and then the next window will open with -rc2, two weeks
> later. The keen-eyed among you might notice that I fixed some incorrect
> -rc1 dates in the future planning section, including for this cycle.
> 
> Thanks all!
> 

-- 
Caleb (they/them)