[PlutoIsAPlanet]

> This one sentence just perfectly sums up everything that's broken in the embedded (i.e. everything non-x86) world. Everyone just forks random stuff at random points in the BSP's life time

A few years ago I did some work that involved building a custom Android image for a SoC manufacturer that's common in TVs.

The BSPs were provided over FTP as split up archive files, held together by bash scripts and had 100s of .patch files scattered all over the place. I am not sure if still the case, but there was also GPL-affected code (kernel patches/modules) that the were certainly not being open sourced at the time.

For each Android point update there was a new set of archives and painful rebasing of the changes we had made on top.

I know there have been changes since, with GSIs etc, but these to me just seem like band aids on the problem.