Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Well, I would try to make it one firmware and just have checks for the hardware in the boot process. I do not think very much is added to the size of the firmware for this. I think tha advantage of having just one firmware is pretty big so it is worth the trouble to get it to work.
Another alternative is to have one installer blob that installs different firmware depending on the hardware.
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As far as I've heard the Opus hardware differs quite a bit from the Cybook hardware (accelometer, different buttons, etc) so there will be significant differences in the handling of the user input. That alone would merit two separate builds.
But what's more is that the Opus is a new line of their product. I know that from the current state of affairs it's hard for me to argue, but if I were Bookeen I would try to offer quick bug fixes and relatively frequent new features in the beginning of a new product line. When I introduce a new line I would increase the intervals between FW release for "old" lines and focus more on the new line. That would be very hard to do if I tried to make a "universal" FW for all my lines rolled into one. Especially the introduction of new features for the new line would be severely complicated if you have to be extra careful not to break the backwards support for the old lines which might not even get that particular feature.
I know it's very hard to argue in this case because increasing the intervals between releases for everything pre-Opus would be pretty hard to manage but if Bookeen wanted to improve things it would be a lot harder.