Removing machines using old u-boot tree

[Joel Stanley]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2022 at 04:18, Dhananjay Phadke
<dphadke at linux.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/22/2022 6:13 PM, Joel Stanley wrote:
> > Hello machine maintainers,
> >
> > The following (see end of email) OpenBMC machines are using the old
> > v2016.07 u-boot fork. I would like to see machines updated to use the
> > new fork so we can reduce the maintenance burden of u-boot.
> >
> > We have two options: move to the newer u-boot fork, or retiring
> > (removing) systems that lack the maintenance effort to stay up to
> > date.
> >
> > The v2019.04 u-boot fork supports both NCSI and direct-PHY network
> > configurations. For most systems the steps required to update are:
> >
>
> 2019.04 is still old to sustain with backports, e.g. files in common/
> were moved around in upstream u-boot.

Yes I agree.

> Looks like much of Aspeed stuff (other than ast2400 and spi driver) has
> been upstreamed already. When can openbmc switch to modern upstream tag,
> say v2022.07 and stage anything not upstream on top of it in u-boot
> mirror?

That's a great point. The project's goal is to move to a branch based
on the latest tag (or even using upstream directly, one day).

There's enough support upstream for booting a direct-phy attached
device on the 2500 and 2600. We lack:

 - NCSI integration (patches from myself on the list and reviewed)
 - SPI flash driver (patches from Chin-Ting on list)
 - eMMC booting support for the 2600 (I made some changes recently,
but they are not sufficient)
 - 2400 support

I have a WIP tree here with the pending patches:
https://github.com/shenki/u-boot/commits/aspeed-queue

With the NCSI and SPI changes merged, we could support the 2500
platforms with upstream.

Once eMMC booting support is merged, we could support 2600.

There are some other requirements beyond booting. For instance, the
IBM P10 ast2600 machines require the otp command for manufacturing. I
suspect there are other hidden requirements that we will need to shake
out.

I welcome efforts from anyone willing to help reduce our delta to upstream.

Cheers,

Joel