[microblaze-uclinux] New autoconfigured platform and tools released

[John Williams <jwilliams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

It's long overdue, but I've finally relased the new autoconfigure 
support for the Microblaze uClinux hardware platforms:

http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~jwilliams/mblaze-uclinux/Downloads/platforms.html

What's it all about?  Basically, it's an attempt to reduce the 
frustration involved in getting uClinux booting on a new microblaze 
platform or board.

You have already seen the first stage of this late last year, where 
there was significant kernel rework done to centralise all of the 
configuration parameters into the file 
arch/microblaze/platform/XXX/auto-config.in.

Essentially what we did there was to create a single file that described 
the entire microblaze hardware system (base addresses, IRQs, HW cores 
etc) in a single file, readable by the kernel configuration tools.  Some 
of you may already be using the uclinux-auto platform, possibly 
hand-editing the auto-config.in file as required.

With this newly released uClinux_auto hardware project, the 2nd piece of 
the puzzle is in place.

Working with the Xilinx EDK guys late last year, we created an MLD/TCL 
script set (MLD = Microprocessor Library Definition, one of the libgen 
input files) that automagically generates the auto-config.in file from 
any given Microblaze project.

What this means is that you simply run libgen over your Microblaze 
project, and it auto-generates a kernel configuration file 
(auto-config.in) for that particular platform.  You can even specifiy a 
path to the kernel sources and the file is automatically copied into the 
right place.

So now, if you change the IRQ ordering of your peripherals, it will be 
automatically picked up in the kernel.  Same for base addresses, new 
instances of supported peripherals (uartlite, ethernet, ...), and so on. 
  The main memory size and base address are automated, so now more 
messing around there.

In short, it should be a huge boost to folks when trying to get 
microblaze uClinux booting on a new board, or keeping it booting when 
making hardware changes!

There's a brief readme in the package, that explains some of it - I'll 
be answering questions here as they arise as well.

You need EDK/ISE6.3 with latest service packs to use these new features.

Have fun,

John



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