85xx FDT updates?

[Kumar Gala]

On Apr 25, 2006, at 12:08 PM, Eugene Surovegin wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 11:55:49AM -0500, Kumar Gala wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 25, 2006, at 11:49 AM, Dan Malek wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 25, 2006, at 3:49 AM, Eugene Surovegin wrote:
>>>
>>>> It seems some people here lost touch with reality - embedded  
>>>> Linux is
>>>> mostly run on custom hardware, not on evaluation boards.
>>>
>>> This is the reason I usually mention such things.  While we all
>>> want to see the new features, we have to be sensitive to the
>>> real world product deployment of Linux.  While your world
>>> may be a few evaluation boards that allow you to update
>>> software many times a day, the real world products can't
>>> afford to do that.  From my own experience, I can tell you
>>> that none of the deployed systems I've worked on will
>>> ever update U-Boot.  They consider this a sacred piece of
>>> software such that is all else fails they can recover a
>>> system remotely using U-Boot commands.  They won't
>>> risk updating U-Boot in case it fails.  Making Linux dependent
>>> on a particular, updated, version of U-Boot just isn't going
>>> to work in most deployed systems.  Or worse, making
>>> Linux dependent on U-Boot isn't necessarily popular
>>> either.  For various reasons, especially when replacing
>>> legacy software, some custom boot rom is often the
>>> only choice.
>>
>> I understand this, however these systems are not in the kernel tree
>> and thus we can only do so much for them.  I agree a shim between a
>> non-flat dev tree aware u-boot and kernel would be a good thing.
>> However, I don't see that as something I have to produce as a board
>> maintainer if I can give you and updated u-boot to use.
>
> Kumar, you are missing our point. Let's say I packaged Motorola eval
> board and sold it as my product. So, you have this board in the tree
> but I cannot update firmware on this board. What you suggest I have to
> do so my customer can run new kernel on it? Recall the board or fly
> to the customer site with Abatron? This is just ridiculous.

If you are doing this, you should have someone for your customers to  
update the firmware.  What happens when Freescale finds an errata  
that requires a new firmware image?

I understand the point for a custom solution, however I think make  
the same claim for a reference board is silly, until someone can show  
me a real case in which its not feasible to update the firmware.

- kumar