On Tue, 5 Dec 2017 14:07:46 +0000 Leif Lindholm
<leif.lindh...@linaro.org> wrote:
Please don't ship dtb files at all, including the kernel images.
If firmware does not come with hardware description, that is a
shortcoming of the firmware. If a newer kernel cannot be booted with
an existing device tree, then that is a bug and the kernel should be
patched.
Ok, so in your world a distribution should not ship any dtb files,
because the manufacturer's firmware is bug-free and feature complete on
day one.
That's nice, but doesn't sound like the real world at all.
> By all means, put a tree of verified actually working device trees
> somewhere for platforms known to be provided with bad versions from
> their manufacturer.
That tree is the sum of the dtb files of the corresponding kernel, which
this bug report is about. Those may not adhere to your definition of
verified, but please don't forget that there're two separate worlds out
there: upstream and downstream. Debian's current way of booting a kernel
release with its dtb ensures those world never collide, and I think that
is a very wise choice.
I don't know what devices you work on, but I have a couple of different
consumer armhf and arm64 devices, spread out over different
architectures. All their device trees are updated every single kernel
release. Often it's for new drivers like mmc, pci, net, dri etc., which
obviously the installer could make use of. Bindings are merged with the
driver, so of course I want the dtb matching its kernel!