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.