[coreboot] support for coreboot on KTQM77/mITX

[Peter Stuge]

Hi Michael,

Michael Hagemann wrote:
> I am also very new to this mailinglist

Welcome to the coreboot community.


> and would like to know how we can get our latest Ivy Bridge
> Mainboards from Kontron tested for coreboot and into the
> compatibility list.

You'll need to do the work to "port" coreboot to the KTQM77, at a
minimum you'll need to add some files to the coreboot source tree in
order to add the board into the coreboot build system, but most
likely some ACPI source code and PIR interrupt routing information
will also be needed. If you have custom hardware peripherals on the
board then they may require some code to be initialized.

coreboot uses git for source control, the same tool that is used for
Linux kernel source control, so if you have experience from working
with the Linux kernel community then you'll recognize many things
while working in the coreboot community.

You'll use git to create some commits with your changes to the
coreboot source tree, you'll then register on the
http://review.coreboot.org/ website which is a Gerrit instance
that we use for the code review and code integration processes.

You will need an OpenID in order to register with Gerrit, please let
me know if you would like me to create one for you, I would be happy
to do so, but perhaps you already have an OpenID from somewhere else,
it does not matter where you get it from.

Then you'll push your commits to the Gerrit system, publishing them
to seek review from the coreboot community. If you get no feedback
you'll probably nag individual developers with knowledge about the
parts of coreboot that are relevant for this new board, so that they
will take a look at your changes.

If after discussion there is agreement that some of your changes need
modifications then you'll modify your commits, maybe using the crazy
powerful 'interactive rebase' feature of git, and then push new
versions of the commits to Gerrit for a second round of review.

If you have experience with the various tools then the process is
quite easy. If you have never used any of these tools and
technologies you'll certainly have to spend some time to learn how to
use them - and then you will possibly never want to use anything
else. :)


> In the past this was handled by a colleague of mine who is not in
> the company anymore.

Too bad if the colleague left without transfering any knowledge -
that could probably have helped save you a lot of time. The community
is generally helpful, but is based on volunteer effort, and not
always available to assist on the schedule that you would need.


> In detail we would like to get our mini-ITX board KTQM77/mITX
> approved for coreboot.

Great! If you push some nice and clean commits to Gerrit then the
rest is fast and easy. Of course creating those commits can be
difficult.


> If anybody could suggest something to me I would be very happy.

It is not clear what your current state of coreboot is on the board.

Have you already done the porting and coreboot works for you on the
board, or are you just now starting the process of porting coreboot?

Both are good - and in fact if you are just now starting then I think
you can save a lot of time by staying in touch with the community
throughout the process. Feel free to also join the #coreboot chat on
irc.freenode.net for live discussion.


//Peter