How To Build U-Boot

U-boot is extremely easy to build. It only takes a cross-toolchain and a source tree to build a statically-linked binary. The following document provides the instructions needed to build U-Boot for a generic board.

Important Note: U-Boot is not necessarily built by Timesys for every board. There are some ports of U-Boot that can only be built using very specific toolchains. If you have difficulty building U-Boot for your platform, please consult LinuxLink Support to see if the given port is tested and supported.

Prerequisites

• U-Boot sources — available in the Timesys Repository, through the Factory, or from Denx U-Boot FTP.
• Cross Toolchain — available from Timesys through the Factory or Timesys Repository.

Procedure

1. Download the sources and decompress the archive into a working directory.
2. Enter the U-Boot directory.
3. Configure U-Boot with the following command:
   

   make <board name>_config

4. U-Boot uses a basic make command, with CROSS_COMPILE variable.
   

   make CROSS_COMPILE=<toolchain prefix>

   
   will compile U-Boot. The resulting file will be in the U-Boot root directory as u-boot.bin.

Example

The following commands will produce the file u-boot.bin, configured for the AT91SAM9260-EK:

$ tar xjf u-boot-2009.01.tar.bz2
$ cd u-boot-2009.01/
$ make at91sam9260ek_config
... with environment variable in SPI DATAFLASH CS1
Configuring for at91sam9260ek board...
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=armv5l-timesys-linux-gnueabi-

Known Issues

strip img2srec fails during build

This is typically caused by including the Timesys toolchain in your path. Rather than using your host strip utility, U-Boot ends up using the cross version instead. You can test this by running the command: which strip. If it shows anything other than /usr/bin/strip or /bin/strip, then there is a problem with your path.

Solution: Put the Timesys toolchain at the end of your PATH variable instead of at the beginning.

U-Boot target names

The following values can be used in U-Boot to build for the specified target. Use these in place of *<board name> in the configure step above.

When in doubt, you can check the Makefile in the root of the U-Boot source tree to see supported configuration targets.