Most likely you know "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Theme by Ennio Morricone".
Let's try to apply this catchy title in reverse order to U-Boot release 2018.11.
The ugly
Themkimage tool, which is part of the U-Boot distribution, is used e.g. to produce the legacy uImage kernel or newer uImage.FIT images. uImage contains a U-Boot header, which is supposed to be backwards compatible to the beginning of time. Well that's the theory. If something changes in a U-Boot release in this U-Boot header your favorite boot loader thinks it loads the wrong image type in case U-Boot and mkimage are built with different U-Boot versions. This is what's the case with U-Boot release 2018.11. So you might want to be careful if you use it.
This patch Signed-off-by: Robert Berger restores backwards compatibility.
The bad
Making things worse is this announcement/patch on the U-Boot mailing list, which removes a lot of boards from the next U-Boot release 2019.01 if they are not converted to the Driver ModelCONFIG_DM and if they don't use CONFIG_BLK.
- arm: Remove s32v234evb board
- arm: Remove ls1043ardb_sdcard_SECURE_BOOT board
- arm: Remove ls1046ardb_sdcard_SECURE_BOOT board
- arm: Remove colibri_imx6_nospl board
- arm: Remove guruplug board
- arm: Remove sniper board
- arm: Remove omap3_zoom1 board
- arm: Remove sksimx6 board
- arm: Remove tbs2910 board
- arm: Remove theadorable_debug board
- arm: Remove devkit3250 board
- arm: Remove pcm051_rev3 board
- arm: Remove ds109 board
- arm: Remove pcm058 board
- arm: Remove am335x_shc_ict board
- arm: Remove vining_2000 board
- arm: Remove cm_t43 board
- arm: Remove igep00x0 board
- arm: Remove sheevaplug board
- arm: Remove omap3_overo board
- arm: Remove am335x_boneblack board
- arm: Remove warp7 board
- arm: Remove gwventana_gw5904 board
- arm: Remove cairo board
- arm: Remove pico-hobbit-imx7d board
- arm: Remove mccmon6_sd board
- arm: Remove apalis_imx6_nospl_it board
- arm: Remove wandboard board
- arm: Remove birdland_bav335a board
- arm: Remove gurnard board
- arm: Remove xpress_spl board
- arm: Remove udoo_neo board
- arm: Remove nas220 board
- arm: Remove am335x_pdu001 board
- arm: Remove snapper9260 board
- arm: Remove pfla02 board
- arm: Remove colibri_pxa270 board
- arm: Remove work_92105 board
- arm: Remove omap3_pandora board
- arm: Remove cl-som-imx7 board
- arm: Remove devkit8000 board
- arm: Remove pengwyn board
- arm: Remove dreamplug board
- arm: Remove mx6sabreauto board
- arm: Remove imx6q_logic board
- arm: Remove zc5202 board
- arm: Remove imx6dl_mamoj board
- arm: Remove omap3_logic_somlv board
- arm: Remove cm_t335 board
- arm: Remove liteboard board
- arm: Remove am43xx_evm_usbhost_boot board
- arm: Remove chiliboard board
- arm: Remove am335x_baltos board
- arm: Remove kp_imx6q_tpc board
- arm: Remove lsxhl board
- arm: Remove udoo board
- arm: Remove marsboard board
- arm: Remove mx6sabresd board
- arm: Remove dh_imx6 board
- arm: Remove vinco board
- arm: Remove ls1021atwr_sdcard_ifc_SECURE_BOOT board
- arm: Remove mx6cuboxi board
- arm: Remove ot1200 board
- arm: Remove socfpga_stratix10 board
- arm: Remove am65x_evm_a53 board
- arm: Remove ap143 board
- arm: Remove ap121 board
- arm: Remove imgtec_xilfpga board
- arm: Remove socfpga_de0_nano_soc board
- arm: Remove clearfog board
- arm: Remove socfpga_arria10 board
- arm: Remove omap3_beagle board
- arm: Remove helios4 board
- arm: Remove socfpga_socrates board
- arm: Remove socfpga_sr1500 board
- arm: Remove ls1021aiot_sdcard board
- arm: Remove socfpga_de10_nano board
- arm: Remove socfpga_dbm_soc1 board
- arm: Remove socfpga_de1_soc board
- arm: Remove socfpga_sockit board
- arm: Remove dns325 board
- arm: Remove socfpga_is1 board
- arm: Remove brppt1_mmc board
- arm: Remove db-mv784mp-gp board
- arm: Remove socfpga_arria5 board
- arm: Remove socfpga_vining_fpga board
- arm: Remove dra7xx_evm and dra7xx_hs_evm boards
Quite a few of those boards (i.mx6, socfpga, sitara, zynq,...) are still happy members of my test farm running U-Boot 2018.11.
