Re: integrating dtc into the sim/ tree

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>]

> moxie is the only one that hard requires dtc (it might be limited to
> maintainer mode).  but the larger point is to delete a large body of
> custom code that the sim has today for parsing its device tree like
> data format and convert over to the standard format that the rest of
> the world is using now.  and longer term, make it so we can share dtc
> files between linux/u-boot/qemu such that you can feed a fdt to the
> sim and it'll automatically bring up hardware in the same way as the
> kernel would have found it.
> 
> atm, you have to basically write two different device trees with
> different syntax and names, then feed one to the sim and the other to
> the kernel.  and hope they don't get out of sync :).
> 
> there's basically no chance of people rewriting the existing sim code
> so that it gains all the same functionality as the public dtc, and
> then keeping it in sync.  i'd rather just gut it and be done, and get
> the dtc updates for free.

My 2 cents: This sounds interesting, but on the other hand, I have
this feeling that requiring dtc might be a big ask. I'm not sure
how portable the dtc project is, and how easy it is to get it
installed. I went to the "Device Tree Compiler" page you referenced,
and it doesn't give at all the impression of being a mature and
widespread project... For instance, I was looking for the documentation
in order to check for things like installation, OS support,
requirements, etc. I ended up looking inside the source tree itself,
and found Documentation/manual.txt and README, but none of them answered
any of these questions. I am also wondering about releases and such,
but couldn't really find much about it.

I hope this explains why I would personally feel a little more
comfortable if that dependency remained optional.

Now, if the project was really super easy to install and completely
portable (think Linux & Windows, of course, but also Darwin,
Solaris...), I would consider making it mandatory.

-- 
Joel