device trees.

[Grant Likely]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 7:12 PM, David Gibson
<david at gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 05:09:27PM -0600, Grant Likely wrote:
>> In other words; having your bootloader support FDT is preferred, but
>> not required.
>
> I wouldn't even go so far as to say it's preferred.  IMO, people have
> gone a bit prematurely keen on moving devtree handling into the
> firmware.  Putting it in the firmware has a number of advantages, but
> it also has a number of non-trivial disadvantages.

I disagree.  The more I work with it, the more I appreciate the
advantage of decoupling the kernel image file from the hardware
description.  It is valuable being able to build a single image file
that boots on a wide range of boards because the device tree passed in
by firmware.

I'm not downplaying the disadvantages and problems, but I still hold
the view that the striving for generic multiplatform kernel images is
worth the effort.

... but I do agree that hard linking the .dtb into firmware, or making
the .dtb hard to upgrade is the way of madness.

g.

-- 
Grant Likely, B.Sc., P.Eng.
Secret Lab Technologies Ltd.