Re: GSOC - Interested in making u-boot compilable on NetBSD

[Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 06:21:44PM +0000, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> >>  2. Reproducibly and reliably boot a full NetBSD system using U-Boot
> >>     from an emulated x86 system under QEMU.
> >>     - This is faster to test than actual hardware, and may allow for
> >>       easier compatibility of NetBSD with coreboot in the future. It
> >>       also has the advantage of sidestepping any issues with cross
> >>       compilation that may occur.

I am a bit confused about this step (and showing my ignorance) - what
x86 systems are there that qemu can emulate and NetBSD support that are
usefully bootable by u-boot?

I would prefer to see concrete systems named here, or just skip this step
(if it is not practically usefull).

However, ignore this if it just shows my ignorance (but maybe add explanatory
comments in that case).

> >>  3. Reproducibly and reliably boot a full NetBSD system from a natively
> >>     built U-Boot on a Beaglebone Black (ARMv7 system)
> >>      - U-Boot is far more useful on architectures other than x86, and

This is the main step that needs to happen. Please clarify "natively"
here, as we have a mix of host/target machines here and I assume you
mean something like "build a u-boot targetting arm on NetBSD/amd64 natively".

This needs to be specified a bit more detailed - i.e. does it reach over
into $TOOLDIR/bin/* and uses those tools directly?

> >>  4. If possible, allow U-Boot to build using BSD Make
> >>     - The U-Boot makefile and build system is based heavily around
> >>       features and syntax specific to GNU make. While building with
> >>       BSD-make would be far more convenient, it may not be feasible from
> >>       a maintenance perspective.
> >>     - It will likely be necessary to create a wrapper around the
> >>       existing build system, in order to integrate U-Boot with pkgsrc.

This is in the "additional bonus" area already - but would be way cool!
The pkgsrc <-> native build system reachover is probably easier than
you expect (just using $TOOLDIR/bin/nbmake-$ARCH as make and having the
pkg point at that).

> In the project page it is also mentioned that you should try to feed back
> the changes to the u-boot folks. We should get them involved from the
> beginning to see if they are interested in our changes; also how do they
> prefer us to send them patches.

Inded!


Good luck with the proposal, looks good to me.

Martin