[Buildroot] Sample configurations / test suite ?
Thomas Petazzoni
thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com
Mon Jul 1 07:19:25 UTC 2013
Dear Arnout Vandecappelle,
On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 08:00:02 +0200, Arnout Vandecappelle wrote:
> > What do you think about this? Do you have ideas on how to implement
> > this? Should it be part of the Buildroot tree itself, or something
> > separate? If something separate, how do we keep Buildroot and this
> > separate tree in sync?
>
> For both use cases, it makes the most sense if these defconfigs are
> part of the buildroot tree.
In order to keep those configurations consistent with the rest of
Buildroot, I agree that having them in the Buildroot tree is probably
the easiest option. However, I'm worried about the size of it: I was
not only thinking of defconfigs, but potentially additional artifacts
needed to make the build work.
> The risk is that the configs/ directory becomes too large and unwieldy
> (people will have to browse it to find the defconfig they want). So
> perhaps this calls for changing it into a tree.
>
> Personally, I think it makes sense to move the defconfigs into the
> board/ directory. Many defconfigs already refer into there for kernel
> configs or specific patches, so it makes sense to put the defconfig in
> the same place.
Funnily enough, the defconfigs *used* to be in the board/ directory
(which at the time was target/device). We had a discussion back in the
days on whether the defconfigs should remain with their board, or
grouped in the top-level configs/ directory.
See
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2009-October/029556.html
and my complaint
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2009-October/029559.html.
That said, after several years, I feel that configs/ was a pretty good
choice, I don't really feel the need of moving things back to board/,
especially considering the change it will cause to all users.
Moreover, I am not sure that those test suite / demos
configurations should be located in the same place as the minimal
defconfigs we have in configs/.
> And while I'm on this subject, I think the structure of the board
> directory is not very clear. It would make sense to me to switch to the
> layout that U-Boot uses: board/<arch>/<soc>/<boardname>/ (although the
> <soc> level may be optional for us). You can expect people to know what
> the basic architecture of the processor is, but not always who the vendor
> is (which is probably why raspberrypi, beaglebone and gnublin don't have
> a vendor directory). Or sometimes there are multiple vendors for the same
> board (e.g. Beagleboard and SabreLite).
Hmm, no strong opinion on this one. How many end users know which SoC
the RasberryPi is using?
Best regards,
Thomas
--
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com
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