Am 06.11.2014 um 20:16 schrieb ron minnich:
the last 15 years shows that the number of people who want to build is a tiny fraction of those who just want an image they can burn.
It solves a different issue, and yes, an important one.
So, thinking as I type: John Lewis is Da Man in terms of maintaining a system that lets people pull an image, flash it automagically, recover, and so on, all without having to build it.
If we want to go for a library, we should also handle redistribution issues - vgabios, various firmware could be extracted from the running system or downloaded images and compared against known-good hashes, then added to partial images.
So how about we forget about release cycles for the tree and think in terms of the problem of distribution of good images for people? Does that make things easier? I don't know.
The concern with having buildable source for users is relevant for a certain groups of tinkerers and vendors alike. The former build everything from source (because they have unusual demands on their firmware), the latter want to be able to point to working code for reference boards that can serve as template for further development.
Since the most recent request was about keeping certain parts of the code stable, that's what I ran with.
Patrick