Hello,
Recently I added support for a hardware platform and I am wondering how I can get the hardware platform to be apart of the release builds. I think I remember seeing something in the wiki about adding ones name to a file which means they are the official tester for that device? I have looked in the wiki and cant find the page again. But assuming my memory is correct, is that the only step to get a release built for the device?
If you get your target/ device merged into master before the next stable released branch gets branched off (and assuming it's not marked source-only, to mature further in tree), it's going to be part of that release branch. For 22.03 that cutoff point would have been in late February/ early March, if it missed that opportunity, it will have to wait for the next release branch, probably next year or very late this year; exceptions may apply (but in general, no).
Target maintainers are no longer used for OpenWrt, so you don't need to add your name as maintainer to the Makefile anymore - but obviously, it is expected that a newly added target keeps being maintained. Drive by contributions are fine for just adding just-another-device to an existing target, for adding a new (sub-)target, a little longer term involvement is expected, but that's the question for the code being merged in the first place, less so for the question of it becoming part of the next release (source-only is kind of a middle ground, not considered ready for the (upcoming) release, but still taken care of). So, just get your patches merged, the rest will happen naturally. Normal git procedures and best practices apply, so you will have to add your signed-off-by to your patches, which will record your authorship in git history and allows to contact you as well.
Edit: in the specific case of the ClearFog GT 8K, the situation is a bit easier. You aren't adding a new target, just a new device to an already existing one - and the changes are pretty minor, small enough to maybe nudge an OpenWrt developer to backport it to openwrt-22.03 (it meets the criteria for backporting, for an exception, but if you want that, it needs to be done very soon). It would certainly help to assert that you have tested the backport for 22.03~.
Excellent. I will run the 22.03 release code on the board and see what happens. I am not aware of a test suite for a specific device, other than the kernel boots etc.
And Full disclosure, the manufacturer is no longer selling the ClearFog gt8k, so I now have hesitations about adding it to a release if it is no longer commercially available. They are however making another board that I am going to try to get into mainline openwrt so I will apply this knowledge to that effort.
Thank you.
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