Removing machines using old u-boot tree

[Dhananjay Phadke]

On 8/22/2022 9:35 PM, Joel Stanley wrote:
> 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).

Sometimes it's better to be at par or not far ahead of poky
u-boot recipes, as the classes/recipes are dependent on
the u-boot codebase they use.

Recently ran into issues u-boot-sign in other project, using
yocto dunfell (which is at v2020.01) + v2022.04 u-boot tree.

yocto kirkstone is v2022.01.

> 
> 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.

Thanks for summarizing the status, hope to spend some time and help.

Regards,
Dhananjay