Hi folks, welcome to fashrom-stable!
What's it going to be? Most of all, a continuation of the effort that ceased ~3 years ago. We tried to reduce technical debt in the code and to provide regular releases. I hope we can create something sustainable, something that can be maintained without requiring permanent attention.
I see some traits in flashrom that I grew particularly fond of over the years:
* It compiles and runs on an incredible amount of platforms. * It doesn't have to drop old hardware support. * It's for everyone, even humble users. We try our best not to brick any machine by accident.
I'd like to keep it that way.
Lacking any bigger discussion about the development process, I came up with a tight plan for the first release and a rough one for the second. I'll start a `main` branch soon that will be based on flash- rom 1.2.x. The idea is to start by picking cherries from the original flashrom `master`.
For the first release, flashrom-stable 1.0, I'll make two runs, picking changes and additions related to flash chip support and then changes and additions in programmer support. This will also draw in some related work to avoid merge conflicts. Apart from that only fixes and infra- structure changes should be merged. This will hopefully keep the wide platform support of flashrom 1.2 in tact. Then, flashrom-stable 1.0 should be able to fill the 3 year gap for older platforms.
Once we have branched for the 1.0 release, development should be more open for all kinds of changes. However, I'd like to focus on some par- ticular things until branching for the 1.1 release:
* build-system changes that happened on flashrom master (revised Makefile and decent Meson support) * useful refactorings from flashrom master * CLI for the write-protect support * updated internal flashing support for AMD systems * Aarya's still unmerged erase overhaul
1.0 should be ready around Christmas/New Year. 1.1 hopefully around FOSDEM.
I'd much appreciate any help with the review. I'll set up a group on Gerrit for reviewers (+2 rights) and add a few folks that I see as experts in (an area of) flashrom. If anyone feels like they are mis- sing there, please write to me and we can discuss things. I'll try to write down some rules about this after the first release. +1 re- views are also appreciated, just note down what aspects are reviewed and if you consider a patch as ready.
Well, I tried to keep the mail short. And hope it's enough to give flashrom-stable a good start.
Cheers, Nico