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Device tree is a tree structured data describes devices on a board. This is used by operating system's kernel in order to manage a computer hardware components including cpus, buses and external peripherals.

A device tree bindings file offers information about the properties supported by Linux kernel device tree blob.

Location for this documents is under Documentation/devicetree/bindings/.

1 contributor medium-size (175hours)

Level of difficulty: Intermediate

Historically device tree bindings were written in plain .txt files. These files serve only as documentation but they cannot really be used to validate the syntax used in device tree files.

In order to improve validation of dts files, Linux kernel switched to writing device tree bindings using json-schema.

The goal of the project is to convert as much .txt files into .yaml json-schema files.

$ linux/Documentation/devicetree/bindings$ find . -name '*.txt' | wc -l 1795

You can have a look at this example of a conversion patch looks like.

Before writing your proposal you need to:

1. Watch this presentation from Krzysztof and get a feel of the work should be done in the project.
2. Write an email to project Mentor announcing your intention to work on the proposal.
3. Create a small patch that converts a device tree binding .txt file to yaml

How to create a small patch?

1. clone the Linux kernel tree: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/robh/linux.git/
2. look inside Documentation/devicetree/bindings
   • start with small and simple .txt file and convert it to yaml
   • discuss with your mentor about your chosen file and after that start working on the patch
3. Watch again the presentation and read about how to create your first patch .
4. Review patch your mentor by email first and after that send it to community
5. Always verify your patch before submitting for review
   • make dt_binding_check DT_SCHEMA_FILES=Documentation/devicetree/bindings/trivial-devices.yaml
   • make dtbs_check DT_SCHEMA_FILES=Documentation/devicetree/bindings/trivial-devices.yaml
   • make DT_CHECKER_FLAGS=-m dt_binding_check

Desired knowledge: C, shell scripting, make, git

Code license: GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause

The project is considered successful if the code is accepted into mainline Linux kernel tree.

Mentor: Daniel Baluta daniel.baluta@nxp.com