Hello,

I recently updated the HAL in the i.MXRT BSP. I used the same approach that we use for a lot of similar cases: Import the sources into RTEMS and adapt them slightly so that they work for us. So basically a Clone-and-Own approach.

During the discussion of the patches, some concerns were raised, whether we should find a better solution to handle HALs, SDKs and similar cases. We should start discussing a solution that can be used after the 6 release so that maybe someone can start to work on a prototype.

Some example cases are:

- the mcux_sdk in the imxrt BSP
- the hal in the stm32h7 BSP
- general ARM CMSIS files
- zlib
- libfdt

One solution could be to build these libraries external and only link RTEMS with them. There are disadvantages to this aproach:

- Also in my experience, the API of the HALs / SDKs / libraries seems to be quite stable, it's possible that there are combinations where some unexpected change breaks a driver or makes it impossible to link the applications.

- BSPs rely on basic drivers from these libraries (like console or clock driver). If we link against the libraries, the testsuite wouldn't build any more without preinstalled libraries.

Another solution could be to include libraties like that as submodules and build them using the RTEMS build system. We could clone the repos onto the RTEMS git server, and add necessary patches. Advantage would be that it is more similar to the process that we currently have. Another advantage is that we have a known-working version of the files. Upstream updates could be either merged or we could rebase our patches to a new version.

From my point of view, the second option would be the better one especially because we have a tested, fixed version of the library instead telling the user to just use some random version that might or might not work.

Regardless which aproach we use: We have to think about how to handle that on releases. In the link aproach (first case), we have to somehow archive source tar balls and some kind of build recipe. In the submodule aproach, we could checkout all submodules and pack the files into the RTEMS release tar ball. So I would expect that the second aproach has less impact here too.

Comments? Improvements? Better suggestions?

Best regards

Christian
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