[Buildroot] out of tree kernel patches question

[daggs]

Greetings Peter,

> 
>  > Greetings,
>  > when it comes to the odroidc2 support, there are 3 things that I'm concerned about:
>  > 1. gcc is limited to 4.9.x
>  > 2. old uboot (2005.11).
>  > 3. very old kernel (3.14.79).
> 
>  > #1 is needed because #2, currently upstream uboot support this board
>  > from 2007.05 but I've tried for months to get upstream uboot to work
>  > with the vendor's kernel without any luck.
>  > unfortunately, the uboot mailing list isn't helpful at all (no one seems to care much),
>  > this means that in order to solve issue #2, the kernel needs to be upgraded.
>  > latest upstream kernel holds bask support for this board, the
>  > development is progressing. now assuming that I take patches existing
>  > in the kernel mailing list that adds missing support for features in
>  > the kernel to a point that the board can be used in a decent manner,
>  > what is the policy of adding out of the kernel patches to a board in
>  > buildroot?
> 
> Maybe it makes more sense to do it the other way around? First move to
> the mainline kernel and once that is done move to mainline u-boot as
> well. I've used 4.13 with the vendor u-boot without problems.
> 
> The only issue I am aware of for moving to mainline u-boot was an issue
> with HDMI output, as the driver assumed certain things were initialized
> in the bootloader, which was true for the vendor one but not mainline -
> But that is getting fixed:
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/17/134
> 
> As for carrying patches in Buildroot - That is OK for me as long as they
> are not huge and the patches are only temporary (E.G. patches have
> already been submitted upstream and hopefully acked, but they just
> haven't been merged yet).
> 

as I wrote to Thomas, the main reason for this question is to remove the gcc 4.9.x constraint.
without upgrading uboot, that cannot be dropped.
I was working on upgrading the uboot while keeping the vendor's kernel but the board won't boot.
afaics, uboot works, the issue is that the kernel doesn't gets loaded at all.

Dagg.