Wondering what necessitated this change from the old variable name to a
new name...

commit c04528d2a2597d79278833f3607c806278253446
Author: Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Dec 20 21:25:27 2022 -0500

    gnu: u-boot-am335x-evm-boneblack: Fix variable name.

    * gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm (u-boot-am335x-boneblack): Rename to...
    (u-boot-am335x-evm-boneblack), to match the package name.
    * gnu/bootloader/u-boot.scm (u-boot-beaglebone-black-bootloader): Adjust
    accordingly.
...
diff --git a/gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm b/gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm
index bd9f7bb577..c8b8adbc93 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm
@@ -889,7 +889,7 @@ (define*-public (make-u-boot-package board triplet
 (define-public u-boot-malta
   (make-u-boot-package "malta" "mips64el-linux-gnuabi64"))

-(define-public u-boot-am335x-boneblack
+(define-public u-boot-am335x-evm-boneblack
   (make-u-boot-package
    "am335x_evm" "arm-linux-gnueabihf"
    ;; Patch out other device trees to build an image small enough to fit

The u-boot-am335x-boneblack was named to match the original target that
was removed from upstream, adapting the upstream am335x-evm to fit into
a smaller gap in the partition tables... (e.g. 2MB partition offset
instead of 4MB offset required by the default am335x-evm board
configuration).

Was this a side-effect of some of the changes that were implemented with
the raspberry pi series? Is the name change actually needed in some way,
or is it just "housecleaning" ? It doesn't actually "match" the name of
the target, which is "am335x_evm", not "am335x_evm_boneblack".

I would think keeping the old name would allow for seamless upgrades. Or
at least leaving a deprecated package placeholder or something like that
if the rename is actually needed... but a little unclear on the
situation at the moment.


With all that said... having 512MB of ram, I wonder how well a
beaglebone black would do running guix at all...

Are people actually using some of these low-end boards with guix? I'll
admit, I added a bunch of them in my early days of enthusiastically
contributing to guix... but wonder if they are pragmatic to use.


live well,
  vagrant