[Ltib] Using official LTIB release instead of Freescale's

[Neven Boric]

Hi

I'm evaluating the Freescale MPC8309 CPU for a project. I have the 
MPC8309KIT evaluation board, which comes with a copy of LTIB for its 
BSP. This is my first encounter with LTIB. I have already reviewed the 
docs included in the Freescale DVD, I succesfuly built and ran some test 
images, and skimmed through the mail list archives. Previously, I have 
worked for a few years with OpenWRT on an IXP4XX CPU, so I'm very 
familiar with that. I have some questions, mostly about how to do things 
I'm used to doing with OpenWRT. For future reference, I thought it was 
best to separate each question in a different email, so the subject is 
specific to the question. Here goes the first question.

I'm assuming Freescale periodically takes a snapshot of LTIB, generates 
some patches, and ships that as the BSP. Or maybe they maintain their 
own port. In any case, are those patches contributed back to the LTIB 
project? Can I grab the latest LTIB version and expect it to work on my 
board, or I have to stick to the version Freescale provides? The DVD 
came with version 9.1.1, which doesn't seem to be an official LTIB 
release (or maybe Freescale uses a different versioning scheme?)

I found a previous question about this topic:

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/ltib/2011-01/msg00002.html

The answer seems to suggest that Freescale does not (always?) contribute 
back the necessary changes for LTIB to support their platforms. Is that 
correct?

Of course another question is what I would gain by using a newer LTIB 
release. I suppose features are being added and I could find more 
included or newer version of packages. I couldn't find a changelog. 
Should I treat CVS as official changelog?

Regards
Neven Boric