Maintenance of Python tools

[Simon Glass]

Hi Mattijs,

On Wed, 23 Apr 2025 at 06:43, Mattijs Korpershoek
<mkorpershoek at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Simon,
>
> On mer., avril 23, 2025 at 06:28, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi Mattijs,
> >
> > On Wed, 23 Apr 2025 at 01:07, Mattijs Korpershoek
> > <mkorpershoek at kernel.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Simon,
> >>
> >> On mar., avril 22, 2025 at 17:39, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > Tom has indicated that he would like Patman to move out of his tree. I
> >> > suggested on another thread[1] that I maintain it in my 'sjg' tree, so
> >> > here is a new thread to discuss this.
> >> >
> >> > I have already done this for the qemu/efi/coreboot scripts as Tom has
> >> > NAK'ed patches for those.
> >> >
> >> > For the other tools there is going to be quite a bit of churn, as I
> >> > would like to resolve most of the many Python warnings.
> >> >
> >> > Given the shared source between the tools, it would be easier for me
> >> > to do the same for buildman, binman and qconfig. I am thinking that I
> >> > might try a move to allow Gitlab pull-requests for reviews on these as
> >> > well as the mailing list, if that is useful.
> >> >
> >> > For tools which need to sync back to Tom's tree (i.e. not patman), I
> >> > or Tom could do a pull request every now and then, omitting any
> >> > changes that relate to pylint.
> >> >
> >> > Please let me know your thoughts. The timing is good as I am going to
> >> > be sending out a new Patman feature in the next few weeks and it is a
> >> > few thousand more lines of code.
> >>
> >> I have a preference for binman staying in the U-Boot upstream (Tom's)
> >> tree. AFAIK, binman is used by the CI and is also very useful for composing
> >> "complex" bootloader images (For example for the TI k3 architecture).
> >> I don't know a good replacement of binman and I'm afraid that people
> >> will go back to ad-hoc scripts if binman gets removed from the tree :(
> >>
> >> On the other hand, patman is a workflow tool that's not (I think) that
> >> specific to U-Boot and is (to me) replaceable by b4.
> >>
> >> I understand that code sharing makes it more difficult to only move
> >> buildman out of upstream, but in a perfect world, I'd like binman to
> >> stay in upstream.
> >
> > Just to clarify this, I'm not suggesting removing binman. It's just
> > the maintenance and development of new features that I'm referring to.
> > We would still sync source back to Tom's tree.
>
> Got it, thanks.
>
> Wouldn't moving the binman development out of upstream reduce
> contributions/visibility?
> Or do you think that proposing alternative development process (like
> Gitlab merge requests) would attract more folks?

I'm not sure, which is why I am asking about it here, to get feedback.
I like patches on the mailing list myself, but perhaps others don't?

>
> What would be the policy for development/syncing back to upstream?
>
> What happens if binman evolves in a way that's not aligned/practical for
> upstream (Tom's tree) ?
>
> Would that mean that we would have to maintain a fork in upstream?

My thinking here is that U-Boot would simply use binman / buildman as
they are, similar to how dts-upstream (91MB), lwip (9MB) and mbedtls
(48MB) work. But yes, if Tom decides that Binman (3MB) / Buildman
(700KB) / other tools (small) have hared off in an undesirable
direction, then it would be tricky.

Regards,
Simon

> >> > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/CAFLszTg7-yM0L8uuJyN7Jpsb1LbvOYO76cUWj+H719mfc97mMQ@mail.gmail.com/
>