Re: Implementing feature requests for a package when a maintainer doesn't respond

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hello Aaron,

Aaron Rainbolt dijo [Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 02:31:02PM -0500]:

Some time ago, I did a lot of work on getting a U-Boot + grub-efi-arm64
boot flow to work on the Raspberry Pi 4 with Debian. I was able to get
a proof-of-concept implementation to work correctly, and was interested
in upstreaming my work to Debian if it was welcome. To that end, I
attempted to reach the team taking care of Raspberry Pi support
maintenance in Debian in a few different ways. [1] [2] [3] [4] So far I
haven't gotten much of a response on any platform.
(...)

I'm sorry for not having replied in all of this time; I would be the person
that took charge of building the RPi images and getting them to support all
of the (then-)available platforms. In my defense, FWIW, I asked the
community™ at large for help adopting it close to two years ago:

    
https://gwolf.org/2023/08/interested-in-adopting-the-rpi-images-for-debian.html

I am sure I also offered it in several Debian-hosted places, but this is
the one I found first.

Obviously, I would like to see this feature in upstream Debian at some
point, which is why I did the work to see if it could be done.

The good news is... We have good news! 😃 I am Cc:ing this mail to Kurva
Prashanth, our GSoC contributor who is working in getting the RPi images
generation back in shape. And the good news is that he has already
implemented the bits you need, using flash-kernel and u-boot.

And, thanks to the work Andrew Cater and Steve McIntyre have been doing and
that we took time to iron out together, I have a clear view of what do we
need to do to get the images building again in a reliable fashion soon™.

Of course... What does "soon™" mean? I would like to tie it to the GSoC
project duration, so that would be in the next couple of months. Naturally,
if you want to work closer together with Kurva... it's a net win for us all!

Please note I'm answering to this first mail (I had mostly not read
debian-devel since mid-June as I was preparing many things for our trip to
DebConf); I am aware several people have answered, and will be reading up
on their answers as well shortly.

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