Integrate Linaro hwpacks for arm with the Ubuntu image build infrastructure

Registered by Oliver Grawert

To use their evaluation builds on different ARM architectures Linaro creates
so called hardware packs which contain board specific bits like kernel, bootloader
and drivers.

The Ubuntu infrastructure currently uses debian-cd in the backend to make images
bootable on ARM boards. In 12.10 we want to remove this duplicated effort and teach
debian-cd about hwpacks from linaro so that it can make use of them for certain
(if not all) ARM targeted images in the future.

In the session going along with this spec we will have to discuss the necessary
changes to debian-cd but also possibly required changes to the hwpacks (we might
want to use a long term supported kernel for example or can not distribute drivers
legally in a community distro which linaro includes in their builds with approval from
the vendor etc.)

Blueprint information

Status:
Started
Approver:
Steve Langasek
Priority:
High
Drafter:
Oliver Grawert
Direction:
Approved
Assignee:
Oliver Grawert
Definition:
Approved
Series goal:
Accepted for quantal
Implementation:
Started
Milestone target:
milestone icon ubuntu-12.10-beta-1
Started by
Kate Stewart

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

(?)

Work Items

Work items:
[ogra] Merge new flash-kernel from debian: DONE
[ogra] split out the HWdb data of flash-kernel into a separate arch-all package: TODO
[ogra] Enhance debian-cd to use the data from the flash-kernel db and functions from flash-kernel-installer to make images bootable: TODO
[ogra] Make debian-cd create a hardware specific overlay image for all hardware specifc bits in the filesystem (/boot, /lib/modules etc): TODO
[ogra] Teach casper to make use of the additional overlayfs image and integrate the hardware specifc bits into the rw live filesystem during boot: TODO

Dependency tree

* Blueprints in grey have been implemented.