Re: [meta-freescale] imx6dl dunfell and kernel: linux-fslc or linux-fslc-imx?

From: "Andrey Zhizhikin" <andrey.z@gmail.com>
To: Terry Barnaby <terry@beam.ltd.uk>
Cc: meta-freescale@lists.yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [meta-freescale] imx6dl dunfell and kernel: linux-fslc or linux-fslc-imx?
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 10:29:36 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHtQpK5NXq3u11a2REE7fOMsjdNE8Z_yTw+NP7kj03z9h8ejZA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <910eca81-bcb4-c4b2-d591-9a853026f184@beam.ltd.uk>

Hello Terry,

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 10:01 AM Terry Barnaby <terry@beam.ltd.uk> wrote:
>
>
> For a novice to NXP Freescale builds, what setup would you recommend as a basic test Yocto build for a Wandboard IMX6 dual lite system in order to test the performance of the hardware video processing system using gstreamer*imx (VPU etc) ?

Since I do not have any of the i.MX6 HW and unaware of the state of
VPU support - I can only speak from distro perspective. Anyone who
posses the HW can clarify points from machine perspective here.

>
> Would fslc-x11 or fslc-xwayland distro with the linux-fslc-imx kernel be the best approach or would some fsl-* distro with the linux-imx kernel be the best approach ?

The first recommendation from my side would be: choose the distro
flavor. There are 2 types of distro in the layer: Community and
NXP-based.

1. All distros with `fsl-` prefix are generally NXP-based, and include
packages that NXP supplies as a part of their distribution. When it
comes to kernel and U-Boot support - `linux-imx` and `u-boot-imx`
packages are set as providers of `virtual/kernel` and
`virtual/bootloader` respectively. This automatically means that if
you take any of those distros prefixed with `fsl-` - you would be
building NXP-based distribution. In addition, all packages that are
marked as compatible with this BSP flavor would be included, in your
case that would include the `gstreamer*imx` package.
NOTE: you can switch the kernel provider to `linux-fslc-imx` for this
BSP flavor, which would include the kernel type I described already in
this thread (NXP release 2.1.0 + latest LTS patch level applied).
`linux-fslc` cannot be set with this type of distro.

2. All distros with `fslc-` prefix are Community-based distros, which
aims to include the upstream OSS packages and avoid using packages
which has "Proprietary" license types in them. Kernel provider is set
to `linux-fslc`, U-Boot provider is set to `u-boot-fslc`. As for the
`gstreamer*imx` - I do not know if the compatibility set in the recipe
would allow it to be included in this type of distro.
NOTE: in this type of distro - only `linux-fslc` can be used as kernel provider.

>
> The standard Wandboard build uses linux-fslc which does not seem to support the imx hardware features and so I am trying to build a suitable test platform but having no luck trying various build combinations that either wont build or wont run properly in various ways, so any pointers would be gratefully received !

This means that Wandboard sets IMX_DEFAULT_BSP = "mainline" somewhere
in its machine configuration, which targets the Community-based
distribution. You can try to find where it is set and change it to
IMX_DEFAULT_BSP = "nxp" to target NXP-based distro, and then use any
of `fsl-` prefixed configuration files on your DISTRO variable.

What you will get with this setup is then NXP-based distribution, but
since as I said above I do not have any i.MX6 HW - I cannot guarantee
that this setup would be 100% operable. Also in this case you would
opt-in to use NXP distribution, so you should watch for licensing
terms.

>
> Terry
>
>

--
Regards,
Andrey.