linaro-media-create not backward compatible

[viresh kumar]

I was trying http://releases.linaro.org/11.11/android/leb-panda/ release for panda board with latest linaro-media-create tool.

It created boot.txt in /boot partition, which had boot with DTB option. DTB's weren't supported in 11.11 Android release.
Should such backward compatibility be supported by this tool?

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

release critical. should get fixed. Please reroll release with fix

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

have no .09 milestone for the infrastructure project anymore... will reopen that milestone for the update.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

reopened and targetted for 2012.09... needs to happen for release next week (deadline: available tuesday, validated wednesday).

Also infra: please setup automation to continue testing all old releases. this isn't so hard.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

When you say automation, I suspect you also mean boot testing? (this problem would not have been detected without it, or at least I suspect that since I don't have a panda to test it on, though I can confirm boot.txt contains board.dtb among the boot parameters)

At this time, I am also unsure how can we easily ensure backwards compatibility regarding boot parameters for Android, considering they are simply static strings made part of the code as well. Should we block any changes to existing code in android_boards.py, because they can easily lead to compatibility problems (other than eg. increasing memory limits, though even those are not completely safe)?

FWIW, this problem was present in 2012.08 release as well (and likely 2012.07, as this change was introduced by Vishal right after 2012.06 was rolled out: https://code.launchpad.net/~vishalbhoj/linaro-image-tools/panda-dt/+merge/111352). Considering it was discovered this late, I'd say this is not a blocker for 2012.09 release, so I'd argue we can have this fixed next cycle as well (iow, no need for a re-roll, especially since the instructions which fail refer to fetching the code from bzr—if they recommended use of the matching release, they'd continue to work).

To clarify, I still consider this a critical regression, but since it is not one introduced by this release, and has been lurking for 3 months, I'd rather us not rush a fix in. My take would be that non-trivial changes are needed to android_boards.py and linaro-android-media-create to allow us to selectively tack dtb boot parameters on while ensuring that we haven't broken compatibility with anything over the last ~10 or so releases.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

right. if the problem is not new, it doesnt need to get fixed for this release. should still be tracked as critical and getting infrastructure in place needed to test this should get high prio.

[Milo Casagrande (milo)]

With the introduction of Android hwpacks, already in l-i-t trunk and available with 2013.01, I guess this issue might be closed, or do we want to adress it in another way?

[viresh kumar (viresh.kumar)]

On 10 January 2013 14:49, Milo Casagrande <email address hidden> wrote:
> With the introduction of Android hwpacks, already in l-i-t trunk and
> available with 2013.01, I guess this issue might be closed, or do we
> want to adress it in another way?

Atleast i am not sure about it :(

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Before we can close it, we should make sure that we extract the bits
that did break compatibility in the past (the ones why this bug was
opened) into a separate "hwpack". Then, our trunk will be able to create
bootable older images as well.

We'll be in an interesting position where it can't boot newer images
without external hwpack configs, but I guess that's ok since it's been
in since 2012.08 I think (i.e. smaller number of releases that'd need
changes).

[Milo Casagrande (milo)]

Due to the age of this issue, we are acknowledging that this issue will likely not be fixed, is no longer applicable, or was already fixed by an indirect change. If this issue is still important, please add details and reopen the issue.