[flashrom] flashrom schedule 2013 (includes my GSoC proposal mostly :)

[David Hendricks]

I think the stuff you laid out would be fine to list explicitly as project
objectives :-) The GSoC FAQ states that continuing work on a project is
fine so long as some "new" work is done as part of your participation. I
think the idea was to ensure students get a chance to diversify their role
in the project since some projects have a few very big parts that people
focus on for several months or years. Flashrom has a lot of smaller parts
and the stuff you mentioned seems diverse and new enough to satisfy the
requirement IMO.


On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Stefan Tauner <
stefan.tauner at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> If mentors agree I would rather not set all project details in stone.
> My previous project of unlocking the ME had a very distinct goal but
> the outcome was something completely different but probably more useful
> to the project than if I would have succeeded IMHO :) Also, progress on
> single points might be delayed due to missing feedback or reviewing.
>
> Main coding period is from 2013-06-17 till 2013-09-23.
> Until then I would like to tag another stable release (0.9.6 was
> released in August 2012) and merge the larger chunks of the patch pile.
> While this might create intermittent problems without proper review it
> will guarantee that there wont be too many conflicts with the code to
> come and it will merge stuff that should have been merged way earlier...
> If there will be others working on flashrom (panic room, serialice or
> even "native" flashrom project(s)), this is even more important.
>
> Here is the list of the most important things I want to merge shortly
> after tagging the next stable:
>
> mine:
>  - Layout patches
>  - Automatic unmapping and rounding of physmaps
>  - Internal DMI decoder
> others:
>  - any makefile-related changes and patches that are waiting on
>    makefile changes only if possible (e.g. libusb stuff)
>  - rayer_spi/lpt_spi (if they do not make it into the stable)
>
> Please suggest other stuff that you think is ready (I probably forgot
> about some)!
>
> My goals for the actual coding season are (in planned chronological
> order):
>  - integrate Nico's libflashrom patches
>  - refine and merge check_trans patch(es). They will be very
>    useful/required for the following goals to be implemented (safely).
>  - add support for multiple write operations
>   * similar to erasers but maybe using distinct enter/exit function
>     pointers
>  - add support for multiple read operations (like writes), allowing to:
>  - add support for 4B-addressing (needed for chips >= 16MB)
>   I have received sample chips from Spansion and Macronix (S25FL256,
>   S25FL512, MX25L25635), but I need to adapt my programmer to work with
>   SOIC16 packages.
>  - improve SPI probing. Something long overdue IMHO. There are less
>    than a dozen ways to identify SPI flash chips. Nevertheless flashrom
>    uses no more than 3 and even those in a rather awkward way.
>   * Determine the best way to allow for multiple probing results/matches
>     per chip and/or how to separate SPI probing from the rest. Possibly
>     split struct flashchip into a generic part and a more specific
>     Non-SPI/SPI union.
>   * Design a method to rank the received results and match the chip-
>   * Implement probing accordingly.
>   * Add more/generify probing methods (EDI).
>   * Mark chips still not distinguishable (on permissive
>     programmers/safely) as evil twins.
>
> Somewhere inbetween I will probably have to create a unified and
> distinct type for on-chip addresses, and possibly address ranges too
> (and functions to operate on those as if they were sets (union,
> intersection, difference)).
>
> If there is still time I could do other infrastructure improvements like
> automatic recovery if something fails etc. or reduce my TODO list
> (which is essentially the same thing). If there is a lot more time I
> would work on the locking interface that and/or improvements regarding
> the "Internal programmer improvements for complex systems" project.
>
> If everything works out as planned I would like to release another
> stable (or at least release candidate) a few months after the big
> changes have been merged, certainly before 2014.
> --
> Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner
>
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-- 
David Hendricks (dhendrix)
Systems Software Engineer, Google Inc.
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