Programmatic firmware updates Topic is solved

[lukehatpadl]

I'm adding support to our XMOS application for updating the firmware over a UART, similar to how firmware updates are handled in lib_tsn.

A couple of quick questions.

The firmware image itself (written using fl_writeImagePage()) – presumably it's not the .xe file itself. Is it the output of xobjdump --strip or something else?

fl_endWriteImage() is called when the image has been uploaded; is there an API call to abort/rollback the in progress firmware update?

Thanks :)

[Daz]

The firmware image itself (written using fl_writeImagePage()) – presumably it's not the .xe file itself. Is it the output of xobjdump --strip or something else?

The API expects an upgrade image generated using XFLASH, from the documentation ("Design and manufacture systems with flash memory"):

$ xflash --upgrade <version-id> latest-release.xe  --factory-version <tools-version> -o upgrade-image

Where <tools-version> is the version used to create the original factory image. <version-id> by default is expected to be a monotonic version counter; the XFLASH bootloader will by default load the image with the highest version number assuming it's valid.

fl_endWriteImage() is called when the image has been uploaded; is there an API call to abort/rollback the in progress firmware update?

If the update did not complete, the bootloader will not consider the image as valid and will fall back to another. Clean up can be done using `fl_deleteImage()` on the incomplete image which will free up the flash area for a new image.

[lukehatpadl]

Thanks Daz!

[lukehatpadl]

Fun fact: if the chip is not initially flashed with an upgrade image with xflash, it appears that fl_startImageAdd() returns 1 infinitely.

[Ross]

do you mean "factory image" rather than "upgrade image"?

[lukehatpadl]

I meant it flashed with factory but no upgrade.

i.e.

xflash --spi-div=8 --factory bin/vestibule_xebra.xe

as opposed to

xflash --spi-div=8 --factory bin/vestibule_xebra.xe --upgrade 0 bin/vestibule_xebra.xe