Hi, On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 01:26:18AM +0200, Ulf Samuelsson wrote : > While AT91bootstrap supports booting linux, this is real minimal support. > Everything is hard-wired so for development it really sucks. > It is really only useful for production work. > I personally never used this capability. > > This functionality is pretty new in AT91boostrap, > and the Atmel (non) presence in the mailing list is an older problem. > > While I no longer work for Atmel, I have a feeling that the problem > is as follows: > > Users are using the Atmel version of U-Boot, not mainstream. > If not using the Atmel version, then they maybe using a build system > like OpenEmbedded where u-boot is built as a part of the build process > and people have very little incentive in modifying that part > > There is very little incentive at Atmel to upgrade because > 1. Patches provided by Atmel are ignored. > 2. Patches are applied to mainline which keeps breaking the AT91 support. > 3. All possible fixes to boot problem are rejected (discussion with > Haavard). > 4. It is considered more important to have a "clean" implementation, > than a working implementation. > (Choice of NOR Flash Driver) > > Atmel does not want to continuously spend effort on unbreaking other > peoples work. > > Problems are not fixed in the mainline due to problem (1). > Instead the problems are fixed in the buildsystem and it is not considered > worthwhile to submit such fixes to the mailinglist. > > The action by the project to "solve" the problem by removing the > boards from > the MAKEALL scripts and also to remove BSPs is not encouraging. > > There used to be a rule that patches should not break board support, but > that rule seems to have gone down the drains. > > The Atmel code is (IIRC) based on 0.3.4 so it is very old, so an > update is really needed > but before U-Boot becomes "developer-friendly", I doubt that will happen. > If the project wants to have Atmel "on-board", then fixing problem > (1) is key. >
Would it be possible to get a list of what is not working on mainline but is working in ATMEL's version ? or at least some pointers. It seems to be working well on my board. I'm really interested in getting mainline working well. I know there is not much interest in the AT91 boards now but I would really like to see that issue fixed. Regards, -- Alexandre Belloni _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
