Hello,
I think in your case the SDK can be very useful to generate the device tree, which is the one telling the Kernel where your peripherals (also the PL ones) are.
Maybe these two options are interesting for your project:
Creating all required components manually:
If you use the U-Boot also as fsbl, you just need to use SDK to create a BOOT.bin file to boot your board and the device tree. Actually, you could write the device tree manually and then compile it, but this would be quite complicated.
Components of the system:
- Bit file: Vivado
- FSBL: U-Boot (cross-compiled manually) / FSBL from Xilinx (you would need SDK)
- Second Stage Bootloader: U-Boot (cross-compiled manually)
- BOOT.bin: SDK
- Device Tree: SDK
- Kernel: cross-compiled manually
- Rootfs: bootstrapping, download one from the Internet...
The advantage of this solution is that you control every component and it's configuration.
Using Petalinux
If you create a project in Vivado with the hardware that you want and build a Petalinux Project using this hardware, you won't have to deal with SDK. If the rootfs that Petalinux creates for you is too "light" for your project, you can configure Petalinux to create a rootfs that is going to be in the SD card and then replace it for the one you like (for example, a Debian one). This way is the quickest one to get something working (also with your pl logic).
Regards,
Ignacio
