On Fri, 25 Jun 2010, Peter Pearse wrote:

Hi

I'm posting this to see if anyone, especially from the Linaro

partners, sees a use for a universal ARM bringup image.

This small (<64MB ) flasheable image would contain an FDT enabled

boot loader and kernel. It would contain (at least) drivers for common UARTs, network chips & USB devices.

This would allow a prototype board to be brought to the stage

where the standard Ubuntu USB installer image could be booted, without the effort of a full boot loader & kernel port.

Only the device tree for the new platform would need to be

developed initially, allowing the full ports to be developed alongside the initial debugging of the prototype platform.

The above is indeed the plan.

However we're far from it due to several technical issues which are prerequisites to some universal support, with or without FDT. The most important ones (in term of work effort involved) are discussed here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/ARMSingleKernel

Work on some of those already started with the bulk of the discussion taking place on the linux-arm-kernel mailing list.

Nicolas