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.

Lopper is in a single repository, and is available via git or pypi:

% 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: pcpp (or cpp), humanfriendly, dtc and libfdt for processing and manipulating device trees. These tools must be installed and on the PATH.

Note: (python cpp) pcpp is optional (available on PyPi), and if not available cpp will be used for pre-processing input files. If comments are to be maintained through the processing flow, pcpp must be used since it has functionality to not strip them during processing.

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.

% pip install lopper

The pip installation will pull in the required dependencies, and also contains the following optional features:

  - 'server' : enable if the ReST API server is required
  - 'yaml'   : enable for yaml support
  - 'dt'     : enable if non-libfdt support is required
  - 'pcpp'   : enable for enhanced preprocessing functionality

i.e.:

% pip install lopper[server,yaml,dt,pcpp]

Note: lopper (via clone or pip) contains a vendored python libfdt (from dtc), since it is not available via a pip dependency. If the vendored versions do not match the python in use, you must manually ensure that libfdt is installed and available.

If it is not in a standard location, make sure it is on PYTHONPATH:

% export PYTHONPATH=:$PYTHONPATH

Pull requests or patches are acceptable for sending changes/fixes/features to Lopper, chose whichever matches your preferred workflow.

For pull requests and issues:

• Use the Lopoper github: https://github.com/devicetree-org/lopper

For Patches:

• Use the groups.io mailing list: https://groups.io/g/lopper-devel

• kernel (lkml) style patch sending is preferred

• Send patches via git send-mail, using something like:

  % git send-email -M --to lopper-devel@groups.io

For discussion:

• Use the mailing list or the github wiki/dicussions/issue tracker

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
    , --overlay       Allow input files (dts or yaml) to overlay system device tree nodes
  -x. --xlate         run automatic translations on nodes for indicated input types (yaml,dts)
    , --no-libfdt     don't use dtc/libfdt for parsing/compiling device trees
  -f, --force         force overwrite output file(s)
    , --werror        treat warnings as errors
  -S, --save-temps    don't remove temporary files
    , --cfgfile       specify a lopper configuration file to use (configparser format)
    , --cfgval        specify a configuration value to use (in configparser section format). Can be specified multiple times
  -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 : 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.

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

Note: 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 pre-processed 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 pre-processed 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.

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

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

• Internal interfaces are subject to change