Overview:
---------

Fundamentally, lopper takes an input device tree (normally a system device tree),
applies operations to that tree, and outputs one or more modified/processed trees.

See the README-architecture.txt for details on how lopper works. This README file
has practical information, known limitations and TODO items.

config/setup:
-------------

Lopper is in a single repository:

  % git clone git://github.com/devicetree-org/lopper

Ensure that the prerequisite tools are installed on your host. Lopper is written
in python3, and requires that standard support libraries are installed. Current
testing has been against python3.5.x, but no issues are expected on newer 3.x
releases.

In addition to the standard libraries, Lopper uses: cpp, dtc and libfdt for
processing and manipulating device trees. These tools must be installed and
on the PATH.

For yaml file processing, lopper has an optional dependency on python's yaml
and ruamel as well as anytree for importing the contents of yaml files.

Make sure you have libfdt installed and available. If it is not in a standard
location, make sure it is on PYTHONPATH:

     export PYTHONPATH=<path to pylibfdt>:$PYTHONPATH

Lopper overview:
----------------

lopper.py --help

    Usage: lopper.py [OPTION] <system device tree> [<output file>]...
      -v, --verbose       enable verbose/debug processing (specify more than once for more verbosity)
      -t, --target        indicate the starting domain for processing (i.e. chosen node or domain label)
        , --dryrun        run all processing, but don't write any output files
      -d, --dump          dump a dtb as dts source
      -i, --input         process supplied input device tree description
      -a, --assist        load specified python assist (for node or output processing)
      -A, --assist-paths  colon separated lists of paths to search for assist loading
        , --enhanced      when writing output files, do enhanced processing (this includes phandle replacement, comments, etc
        . --auto          automatically run any assists passed via -a
        , --permissive    do not enforce fully validated properties (phandles, etc)
      -o, --output        output file
      -f, --force         force overwrite output file(s)
        , --werror        treat warnings as errors
      -S, --save-temps    don't remove temporary files
      -h, --help          display this help and exit
      -O, --outdir        directory to use for output files
        , --server        after processing, start a server for ReST API calls
        , --version       output the version and exit

A few command line notes:

 -i <file>: these can be either lop files, or device tree files (system device
            tree or other). The compatible string in lop files is used to
            distinguish operation files from device tree files. If passed, multiple
            device tree files are concatenated before processing.

 <output> file: The default output file for the modified system device tree. lopper
                operations can output more variants as required

Note: that since lopper manipulates dtb's (as compiled by dtc), some information
that is in the source dts is lost on the output of the final dts. This includes
comments, symbolic phandles, formatting of strings, etc. If you are transforming
to dts files and want to maintain this information, use the --enhanced flag.
This flag indicates that lopper should perform pre-processing and output phandle
mapping to restore both comments, labels and symbolic phandles to the final
output.

Note: By default Lopper puts preprocessed files (.pp) into the same directory as
the system device tree. This is required, since in some cases when the .pp files
and device tree are not in the same directory, dtc cannot resolve labels from
include files, and will error. That being said, if the -O option is used to
specify an output directory, the preprocessed file will be placed there. If we
get into a mode where the system device tree's directory is not writeable, or
the -O option is breaking symbol resolution, then we'll have to either copy
everything to the output directory, or look into why dtc can't handle the split
directories and include files.

Sample run:
-----------

  % ./lopper.py -f --enhanced --werror -v -v -i lops/lop-load.dts -i lops/lop-domain-r5.dts device-trees/system-device-tree.dts modified-sdt.dts

Limitations:
-----------

 - This is beta version, internal interfaces are still subject to change

TODO:
----

 - Output device tree sanity checking / validation