Hi there
flash-kernel is this place where we add support for a lot of weird boards of various architectures. "flash-kernel" because it used to just write a kernel to Flash memory, but that's not always true anymore. Because it's integrated in d-i and with initramfs-tools / linux packages, it is the easiest way to add support for one new board.
But flash-kernel isn't in the happiest state right now, as new boards were added by copy-pasting the installation logic of other boards over and over. Also, Ubuntu added more and more boards and features to its flash-kernel package, and the delta is really big now (I will take part of the blame for allowing this to happen).
In the light of this situation, and because I think Debian and derivatives will support more and more boards via flash-kernel in the future (for instance modern ARM boards in the armel/armhf ports), I'm interested in improving flash-kernel's code, architecture and scalability (in fact, I started working on it [1]).
I'm at the Emdebian sprint in Cambridge this week and I wanted to pursue work on flash-kernel this week, but a lot of people here would like to have a discussion on this work, and other people seem to be interested in solving the same problems in flash-kernel. So in the interest of avoiding work duplication and in the hope to come up with a good roadmap and target architecture for flash-kernel, I'll be hosting a discussion on flash-kernel development tomorrow morning at 11am UK time. (Sorry for the late notice!) If you're interested in flash-kernel, if you have ideas, patches, etc. consider dialing in! Of course, email works too. I'll work on a wiki page summarizing tomorrow's discussion and the plans around flash-kernel.
Dial-in details: Access code: 52386 86884#
UK Local +44 207 630 2405 UK Freephone 0800 026 0166 US Local +1 781 761 9450 US Toll Free 1 866 352 2709 Brazil 0800 881 0038 Canada 1 866 352 2710 Finland 800 523 103 France 0 805 980 044 Germany 800 589 0993 New Zealand 800 452 290 Taiwan 0800 265 855 China (North) 10 800 152 1873 China (South) 10 800 852 1873 India 000 800 100 7944 Poland 800 331 1398
Anybody is welcome to dial-in. I'd welcome if you would notify me of your presence so that we can expect you on the call. We'll be using #emdebian as back-channel.
Cheers,
[1] branch at http://git.debian.org/?p=users/lool/d-i/flash-kernel.git * adds a testsuite * consolidates code into functions * moves board support data into a database (currently inline for convenience of testing, but will be split out in its own file)