[PATCH] imx: add imx8 support

[Petr Štetiar]

Tim Harvey <tharvey at gateworks.com> [2023-03-09 12:19:24]:

Hi,

> Is there any reason to move them into target/linux/generic/backport-5.15?

sorry for confusing you, but I've just meant to rename the patch files itself,
so they contain bacported kernel version in their filename, making the patch
origin explicit as it makes maintenance of the patches much easier.

There is no need to move it into generic kernel folder and complicate stuff
there.

> I'm assuming you mean just add details above on how I'm booting in the
> commit message?

Yes, just imagine someone buying your board, without much prior knowledge and
would use the commit message as the only source for booting that board with
OpenWrt.

BTW for the folks handling the wiki, the commit message is usually the only
source of information.

> The reason right now that I'm avoiding boot firmware is:
> 1. There was pushback regarding the firmware-imx-8.15.bin license
> required to build boot firmware (see
> http://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2022-August/039247.html)

Well, IMO its crystal clear, that NXP needs to fix this, we can't do much
about it, unless you plan to host it on your servers :-)

Anyway, it's clear, that there is some interest in this SoC and it would be
helpful to have some common base for development, even in the source-only
form.

Thus I would simply like to merge partial support for this SoC once 23.y is
branched, unless of course NACKed. Its really against FOSS spirit, we
shouldn't promote such SoCs even in the source-only form, but I sincerely
hope, that NXP is going to understand the situation and fix it before next
OpenWrt release. 

If it turns out, that I was very naive, we should probably cast a vote and
either keep it in source-only form or remove it.

> This is due FEATURES having ubifs causing USES_UBIFS and
> TARGET_ROOTFS_UBIFS getting set but because

IMO this is likely due to a fact, that you've not defined any device in your
image file, so you don't define `FILESYSTEMS` variable and thus the build
system uses default `TARGET_FILESYSTEMS` which has `ubifs` defined.

So I would probably try to just define a support for a single device with
empty FILESYSTEMS variable and see how that works.

Cheers,

Petr