[meta-freescale] Notes about meta-fsl-ppc and QorIQ development for BSP Community meeting....

[Bob Cochran]

Dear FSL Community BSP Members:

Below are some notes & thoughts on improving the software development 
experience for FSL QorIQ customers:

Please keep in mind that I am working with a QorIQ Power(pc) device.  I 
realize that the overall process is complicated by the fact that there 
is FSL intellectual property involved.


Some Background (to the best of my knowledge):

FSL issues a single QorIQ SDK approximately every 6 months that 
addresses basically all QorIQ devices.  The SDK is integrated with Yocto 
and uses bitbake / poky to generate the SDK image, which includes 
uImage, a dtb file, and a rootfs.

Up until recently, QorIQ devices were Power only.  Now they include ARM 
cores, too.

FSL maintains a meta-fsl-ppc repo on the Yocto project and has recently 
submitted patches to it to bring it in sync with SDK1.6.  However, as 
noted by Otavio in a reply email to Ting Liu on 7/2, the patches were 
submitted without documentation.

The meta-fsl-ppc repo along with other public meta layers on Yocto and 
OE is not sufficient for reproducing a complete build since there is an 
additional required layer: meta-fsl-networking.

A meta-fsl-networking repo can be found in the FSL public git site 
(http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/ppc/sdk/meta-fsl-networking.git/), but 
this is stale.

The Linux kernel in the SDK is customized / heavily patched.  There is 
an FSL Linux repo on the FSL public GIT site 
(http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/ppc/sdk/linux.git/), but it's not 
clear to me what process is used when patching it (most source files are 
stale, but there is an sdk1.6 zip file present in the tree).

There is no mailing list associated with the FSL public GIT site.  There 
is also no bug reporting system associated with the FSL public GIT site.

As far as I know, if I find a bug in the SDK, the process to report it 
to FSL developers is to submit a service request (SR) 
(https://www.freescale.com/webapp/servicerequest.create_SR.framework). 
This is a private one-to-one system, so others don't benefit directly 
when an SR is submitted and / or resolved.


***** end of background ******


I believe there is room for improvement in this process.

Perhaps most importantly today is that I am not aware of a statement by 
Freescale on how their QorIQ customers should make use of the Yocto 
project (repos, mail list, bugzilla, etc.) and FSL public GIT trees 
during development.   In some ways, they are more of a hindrance than 
help because they only seem to cause confusion (for me).

For example, as future patches appear in the meta-fsl-ppc repo, will 
they be for setting the stage for SDK1.7 or to fix an SDK1.6 bug?  And 
even if I knew this, what other patches might be required in repos that 
aren't part of the Yocto project?

I look forward to working together to create / document a system that 
enables Freescale (QorIQ) developers to work as a community to bring 
robust FSL-based networking products to market faster.

Thank you,

Bob