[dtc] breaking out libfdt from dtc so other progs can use it

[Josh Boyer]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:40:43 -0600
Jerone Young <jyoung5 at us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Currently the dtc source code has libfdt integrated in it. This seems to
> have become place for upstream libfdt changes. Now we all know everyone
> (linux kernel, cuboot) also have their own versions over libfdt. But if
> another userspace app wants to use libfdt , it has to copy it from the
> dtc source and try to maintain it's own copy.
> 
> The question I have is can libfdt be split out from dtc source, and
> become it's own thing. This way other userspace apps can easily download
> it and link with it?

Downloading isn't changed at all by splitting it out to it's own repo.

> The reason I ask is I have added dynamic manipulation support of device
> trees in memory into qemu for KVM. But the issue is keeping a copy of
> libfdt in the KVM userspace repository, which is getting some opposition
> (understandably). But this would be much easier if there was a libfdt
> repo for the library so that we wouldn't need to keep our own copy.

It seems the real crux of your issue is that you want distros to
provide a libfdt package.  That can be done by creating a subpackage
off of the dtc package.  The harder part for certain distros will be
either convincing them to allow the static libfdt to exist, or creating
a shared library for it instead.

josh