Future of dfu-util

[Stefan Schmidt]

Hello.

As some of you might have already noticed on the list there have been people
showing up that would like to use dfu-util on other devices then the Neo and the
Freerunner. On a different counterpart then u-boot as well.

I've stepped up to maintain it from an OM devices view. I've also been thinking
about how we could improve it in mid and long term and how we could handle the
maintenance of it.

Short Term
----------
- Include some minimal fixes
- Good testing with different u-boot versions
- Perhaps some initial fixes for other devices
- Release candidate (2010-05-16)
- Release 0.1 (2010-04-23)
- Work with the packagers to get it into the distros

Mid Term
--------
- Go through the OM bug tracker and find bugs for dfu-util and the u-boot
  counterpart
- Get access to OpenPCD hardware and test the current code with it
- Prepare a subdomain for hosting at gnumonks (e.g. dfu-util.gnumonks.org)
- Import the SVN history into a git repo and move on with it
- List with supported devices
- Minimal website with this list and a description
- DFU file suffix handling
- Quirk infrastructure based on product IDs (e.g. timeout handling)
- Fix DFU upload in u-boot
- UI: show endmarker in status bar and/or show percentage
- Check if we can use --static for the static version
- Relase candidate
- Release 0.2 (June?)

Long term
---------
- Merge u-boot DFU patches in u-boot mainline
- DFU runtime descriptor in linux gadget composite framework
- Test more devices (e.g. bt adapter, iphone/ipod, ...)
- Maybe a nice logo?

Some thoughts are not on dfu-util only but about the ecosystem around it. I
think we would profit not only from a solid DFU host implementation but also the
devices counterparts where we have access to the source code.

Help is of course appreciated in all areas. Daniel and Sandros have already
indicated that they will work on DFU suffix handling and maybe the quirk system.

regards
Stefan Schmidt