Does U-Boot for BBB or BB-X15 Currently Scan the Device Tree to Setup Hardware for U-Boot?

In this very interesting post, http://beagleboard.org/discuss?place=topic%2Fbeagleboard%2FjnfNZIIC1V8%2Fdiscussion,

Robert said:

“… The Device Tree Binaries get appended to u-boot.img, luckly we really
don’t use them, as we just grab the kernel version…”

I don’t quite yet grasp the full extent of what this statement means…

Q) But do the current u-boot and/or SPL for BeagleBone/BeagleBoard scan the device tree to setup hardware for either both SPL/u-boot or is everything mainly done through the static functions in board.c?

I grepped on “CONFIG_OF_CONTROL” in my patched u-boot tree (2017.01 - patched a couple of months ago). This is set to “y” in the defconfig, but I couldn’t find any of the functions (e.g. sh_serial_ofdata_to_platdata) sandwiched within this define in u-boot.map, granted that was about the extent to which I looked.

Thanks!!

Jeff

Currently the x15 u-boot is the only one that actually uses the
device-tree-blobs, and very minimally in 2017.01.

For the BeagleBone, we are still using the older pre-device-tree "aka
board file" path..

Regards,