U-Boot is an important open source bootloader used in many embedded Linux systems. U-Boot has a fixed release interval of every 3 months. BayLibre engineers contributed to each release in 2023:
- Alexandre Mergnat enabled the MT81813 Pumpkin board to boot via extlinux
- Julien Masson made it possible to store boot splashscreen images on raw eMMC storage
- Mattijs Korpershoek fixed a fastboot issue that occurred when changing hardware partitions
- Mattijs also contributed a fix to ensure USB is detached on fastboot reboot commands
- Mattijs updated USB OTG support for Amlogic Meson S905X2 to use the U-Boot Driver Model
- Safae Ouajih added Android Boot image v3 and v4 support. This allows implementing modern (Android 11+) boot flows which are mandatory for Android Generic Kernel Image (GKI).
- Mattijs continued improving support for the Khadas VIM3 board by fixing the reset logic in the serial driver.
- Julien Panis made a fix for SPI transfers on TI OMAP3 family SoCs.
- Mattijs fixed a performance regression on Android fastboot writing over USB.
Future contributions
Mattijs reviewed 84 patches and tested 44 patches in 2023. Mattijs has now become a co-maintainer of the USB DFU subsystem in U-Boot and has sent pull requests for the upcoming U-Boot v2024.01 release.