[Bug]: Armbian skips rebuild updated U-boot and keeps cached

[bmx666]

What happened?

I'm using custom board config that has a similar as rock-5b.conf U-boot post config

# Mainline u-boot or Kwiboo's tree
function post_family_config_branch_edge__rock-5b_use_mainline_uboot() {
        display_alert "$BOARD" "mainline (next branch) u-boot overrides for $BOARD / $BRANCH" "info"

        declare -g BOOTCONFIG="rock5b-rk3588_defconfig"                       # override the default for the board/family
        declare -g BOOTDELAY=1                                                # Wait for UART interrupt to enter UMS/RockUSB mode etc
        declare -g BOOTSOURCE="https://github.com/Kwiboo/u-boot-rockchip.git" # We ❤️ Kwiboo's tree
        declare -g BOOTBRANCH="branch:rk3xxx-2024.04"                         # commit:31522fe7b3c7733313e1c5eb4e340487f6000196 as of 2024-04-01
        declare -g BOOTPATCHDIR="v2024.04-rock5b-radxa"                       # empty; defconfig changes are done in hook below
        declare -g BOOTDIR="u-boot-${BOARD}"                                  # do not share u-boot directory
        declare -g UBOOT_TARGET_MAP="BL31=${RKBIN_DIR}/${BL31_BLOB} ROCKCHIP_TPL=${RKBIN_DIR}/${DDR_BLOB};;u-boot-rockchip.bin u-boot-rockchip-spi.bin"
        unset uboot_custom_postprocess write_uboot_platform write_uboot_platform_mtd # disable stuff from rockchip64_common; we're using binman here which does all the work already

        # Just use the binman-provided u-boot-rockchip.bin, which is ready-to-go
        function write_uboot_platform() {
                dd "if=$1/u-boot-rockchip.bin" "of=$2" bs=32k seek=1 conv=notrunc status=none
        }

        function write_uboot_platform_mtd() {
                flashcp -v -p "$1/u-boot-rockchip-spi.bin" /dev/mtd0
        }
}

If I push new commits into branch - Armbian just skips U-boot build and use cached version.

[🐳|🌱] Using cached pip packages for Python tools [ a61a78b41c898744fbc2d1d13d6a127df20406336cbe64af66bf1e075570b93e ]
[🐳|🔨]   Summary: Aggregation: debootstrap: 5; rootfs: 45; image: 3; desktop: 0; apt-sources: 0; hash: 4a7eeaed1446ffd6
[🐳|🌱] artifact [ uboot :: uboot() ]
[🐳|🌱] Using cached [ GIT_INFO_UBOOT ]
[🐳|🌱] Reversioning package [ re-version 'uboot-customer-abc-vendor(deb)::2024.10-rc6-Sabb5-P0000-H272d-Vc176-Bb703-R448a' to '25.02.0-trunk' ]

How to reproduce?

Push new commits into BOOTBRANCH and recompile image. Result - old U-boot in output image.

Branch

main (main development branch)

On which host OS are you running the build script and observing this problem?

Ubuntu 24.04 Noble

Are you building on Windows WSL2?

• [ ] Yes, my Ubuntu/Debian/OtherOS is running on WSL2

Relevant log URL

No response

Code of Conduct

• [x] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[github-actions[bot]]

Jira ticket: AR-2588

[bmx666]

Could you provide information how to FORCE rebuild U-boot ?

[bmx666]

and the worst part, if you for example update BOOTDELAY from 1 to 2, it will build a new U-boot, but if you return back BOOTDELAY from 2 to 1, Armbian will use OLD CACHED U-boot. Cache is good, but not in that case, a lot of side-effects.

[mr-toolcraft]

ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes will force rebuild. So for some reason the config seems not to be considered when hashing? @rpardini

[bmx666]

@mr-toolcraft , thanks a lot! ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes that's what I'm looking for.

For kernel, if there is a new commit in a branch, Armbian fetches and rebuilds the kernel. But for U-boot no reaction, even steps that should fetch the branch from the repository are ignored.

[rpardini]

Untrue. Both kernel and u-boot 'react' to changes in the upstream git repo (KERNELSOURCE and BOOTSOURCE).

We do cache (in cache/memoize if I'm not mistaken) the repo's SHA1 for a certain amount of time -- otherwise the build system would be hammering the upstream git server, which is considered bad practice, especially for kernel.org.

For kernel, one can control this cache's TTL with KERNEL_GIT_CACHE_TTL=120 (cache for 2 minutes).

I don't think this is implemented for u-boot, and thus the cache defaults to 3600 seconds.

A Pull request implementing UBOOT_GIT_CACHE_TTL (via memoize_cache_ttl var to run_memoized() just like is done in obtain_kernel_git_info_and_makefile() would be welcome.