why is armv7 GENERICSD in 13.0-RELEASE?

[Mark Millard]

On 2021-Apr-15, at 10:22, tech-lists <tech-lists at zyxst.net> wrote:

> (not sure where else to post this, -arm seemed most appropiate at first
> glance)
> 
> As per subject. I went looking for armv7-rpi2b images. I could find
> aarch64-rpi images and arm-armv6-rpb images but for some reason the
> armv7-rpi2b image is called armv7-GENERICSD[1]. The only way of working
> out if it could be suitable for rpi2b was to download, unpack the image
> and mount the msdos partition with mdconfig to see that among the files
> there, there's bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb. There's lots of armv7 hardware out
> there not rpi2b. There is only one armv6 image and that is labelled as
> rpi-b. There is only one armv7 image and that's labelled as GENERICSD
> ?!? 
> 1. why can't a naming convention be decided on and adhered to

I use: FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz for
a OrangePi+ 2ed by appropriately dd'ing:

/usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-orangepi-plus-2e/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
and placing /usr/local/share/u-boot/u-boot-orangepi-plus-2e/boot.scr
appropriately.

I also use the same media to boot a RPi2B v1.1 (Cortex-A7 based).

(The two mechanisms do not interfere with each other.) Lots of
other u-boots (+ whatever) are available that could be used
instead of the orangepi-plus-2e one.

Such uses are the intent. But there are no longer pre-installed
u-boot versions like there was in 12.2:

FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-arm-armv7-*.img.xz

FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz replaced them all,
including FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-arm-armv7-RPI2.img.xz . It would be
Hard to keep the same naming convention when 1 replaces many.

FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-arm-armv6-RPI-B.img.xz existed previously,
the naming convention for it has not changed.

As I understand, FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv6-RPI-B.img.xz is
only intended to be for the pre-Cortex-A7 (non-armv7) RPi*'s
and there is no intent to support alternate devices: "GENERIC"
in the naming would not be appropriate naming.

> 2. when naming convention changes, please make some sort of announcement
> on the main freebsd website.
> 
> [1] https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.0/FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz

The likes of the 13.0-RELEASE announcement:

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2021-April/002031.html

did not point to anything to read to find out what to do
with FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm-armv7-GENERICSD.img.xz or
with FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-riscv-riscv64-GENERICSD.img.xz

in order to configure the context for a specific device
(or when that is not required: the Cortex-A7 RPi* type
of context for armv7-GENERICSD).

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)