In-tree Python tools (patman, buildman, binman, etc.)

[Mattijs Korpershoek]

Hi Simon,

On Mon, May 04, 2026 at 10:06, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:

> On Mon, May 04, 2026 at 06:16:58AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> As you know, I maintain several tools which are part of the U-Boot tree.
>> 
>> Tom has previously suggested that it would be better to move patman
>> out of the U-Boot tree, e.g. to its own Github project. It is a
>> general tool which can be used with Linux and other
>> mailing-list/patchwork-based projects. I have never been keen on
>> taking on the extra effort required, but I've recently added more
>> features and am wondering whether now might be a good time to do this.
>> 
>> Buildman is quite obviously designed specifically for U-Boot. I have
>> made some improvements recently (a large code refactor and distributed
>> builds). I would like to push those changes to mainline. Do people
>> think it should be in a separate tree somewhere?
>> 
>> Binman was written with U-Boot in mind but supports other projects
>> (such as Zephyr). It is generic enough that it could be separated. The
>> impact would be harder code review.
>> 
>> We also have smaller things like qconfig (which I have substantially
>> rewritten to make it fast) and dtoc, which is very tailored to U-Boot.
>> 
>> What do people think? Of all of these, patman would be the easiest to
>> move, with the least impact on existing workflows.

First, thanks for maintaining those tools. I'm not an user of all of
them but I think they are great. Especially binman and buildman.

>
> Given that as a project we've been encouraging people to switch to using
> "b4" as it's now widely used and covers many of the problems patman was
> designed to solve, I think that's an easy one to say that you should
> move to your own personal hosting somewhere and it be untied from the
> project. The rest of the tools are something we as a community can
> figure out how to address once some of our general infrastructure issues
> are unblocked and moving forward.

I agree with Tom here. I think that moving patman out of the U-Boot tree
is a good choice. Personally, I'm a happy b4 user so I've never tried
patman.
Let's start ("small") with moving patman and see how things go from there?

>
> -- 
> Tom