RPi4 Status and sysutils/rpi-firmware

[Klaus Küchemann]

> Am 03.03.2021 um 09:12 schrieb Emmanuel Vadot <manu at bidouilliste.com>:
> 
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 19:55:54 +0100
> 
> Even if we find a version of the firmware files that works for every
> RPI boards that all of our users have right now, we will need to update
> them when a new RPI boards is out. And with the Compute Module 4 being
> out and a lot more carrier board being made than for the CM3 I expect a
> lot more firmware updates than before.
> 

Exactly, and where’s the problem ?
There never was a firmware-problem which we couldn’t fix(or identify) quickly 
and adopt patches(or remove broken files) in :
1.: the firmware itself
2. in Rob`s & Mike`s drivers
3. in u-boot
4. for older models by eeprom-upgrade
.. same for cm4, I would be willing to order one if things go better in 
rpi-maintenance. And if I don’t order, the new maintainer , whoever , 
will buy one and fix issues in one- day- fashion :-)
That’s what Rob, Mike, me, Mark Millard & bug-reporters did and it always worked.

>> I could also offer a dtb-patch
> 
> Your earlier proposal was to commit into base a modified DTS based on
> (I think) a decompiled version of the rpi-firmware DTB and put that in
> place of the Linux mainline DTS (which is different) in the contrib
> device-tree import tree.
> This cannot work in the long time, if you don't see a problem I'm
> soryr for you.
> 
If you would have had applied that patch ( in release of course, regardless where it’s source-file is in the src-tree) 
you wouldn’t have heard of any unfixed fw-issue since then.
There is no mainline Linux in that sense, instead there are companies , 
projects and individuals who apply patches as needed.
That’s common practice & that patch was based on the original by Nicolas Saenz Julienne of Suse linux.
It triggers an xhci-reset-function in u-boot, and who was the author of the u-boot-patch?
Right: the man from Suse linux.
So give a shi* on any mainline... the mainline for you and us  is FreeBSD so we pick exactly the files/patches 
we need for ourselves. That’s what your linux-mainline is doing, OpenBSD, EDKII does it that way and absolutely everybody else is doing that. You only have to know what exactly is going on in rpi-org, u-boot, 
gnu, other BSDs and so on. 

You can be sure you you will love your RPI again if you give the port-maintenance to Crowston , Millard, Karels or whoever has the background knowledge and passion to track what happens in rpi-world.

 Just buy a cm4 now, you will love it :-) Ha Ha , lol

K.