[PATCH v2 0/1] meson: Demonstration of using binman to produce the image

[Simon Glass]

Hi Christian,

On Mon, 3 Apr 2023 at 20:10, Christian Hewitt
<christianshewitt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2 Apr 2023, at 6:41 am, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Mark,
> >
> > On Sun, 2 Apr 2023 at 09:28, Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > >
> > > > From: Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org>
> > > > Date: Sun,  2 Apr 2023 06:54:57 +1200
> > > >
> > > > The Odroid-C2 is quite a complicated image with many steps. It is an ideal
> > > > example for how Binman can be used.
> > >
> > > You say Odroid-C2, but the patches seem to address the Odroid-C4...
> >
> > Ah, yes. The difference seems to be an Amlogic S905 on the C2 and an S902X3 on the C4. I wonder if that affects the image makeup?
>
> There are currently four different signing recipes that depend on the
> board family that you are building for:
>
> - GXBB
> - GXL/GXM
> - G12A/SM1
> - G12B
>
> The G12A/SM1 and G12B recipes are identical except for a different
> signing binary used. The latest Amlogic boards (S905X4, T7, etc.)
> also have incremental changes, but none are currently supported in
> Linux or u-boot.
>
> One of the challenges for binman will be the signing tools. Currently
> this patchset depends upon Amlogic binaries. Apart from them being
> closed-source and thus undesirable, they are also x86_64 only and
> there are quite a few users (and at least one major distro) needing
> to build on arm64 hardware.
>
> There is an open-source tool called gxlimg which supports GXL and newer
> boards. IMHO it would make a lot of sense for u-boot to absorb the
> functionality of gxlimg (and extend support backwards to GXBB) as this
> would remove the dependency on Amlogic binaries and allow u-boot build
> and binman signing to be done anywhere.
>
> https://github.com/repk/gxlimg

Fair enough, but another option would be to allow 'binman tool -f
gxlimg' to work, which should be easy. Then we can make use of the
existing C code, using binary tools for the unsupported ones.

>
> > The patch is for testing by Christian, who I hope can help get this landed for all the Amlogic boards.
>
> I will try to find the time to test this, but it’s not something I
> could do more with (as only supporting 1/4 of the board families
> that I need to build for, bu I do appreciate it’s a POC).

Yes, it's a start.

>
> In case you’re not aware, Makefile based signing is implemented in
> the amlogic-boot-fip repo that I’m currently tooled around:
>
> https://github.com/LibreELEC/amlogic-boot-fip
>
> This is the “competition” so to speak. It’s quite simple and widely
> used by most of the Amlogic supporting distros right now.

Well at least that provides the recipes.

Regards,
Simon