This commit changes the esp8266 boards to use littlefs v2 as the
filesystem, rather than FAT. Since the esp8266 doesn't expose the
filesystem to the PC over USB there's no strong reason to keep it as FAT.
Littlefs is smaller in code size, is more efficient in use of flash to
store data, is resilient over power failure, and using it saves about 4k of
heap RAM, which can now be used for other things.
This is a backwards incompatible change because all existing esp8266 boards
will need to update their filesystem after installing new firmware (eg
backup old files, install firmware, restore files to new filesystem).
As part of this commit the memory layout of the default board (GENERIC) has
changed. It now allocates all 1M of memory-mapped flash to the firmware,
so the filesystem area starts at the 2M point. This is done to allow more
frozen bytecode to be stored in the 1M of memory-mapped flash. This
requires an esp8266 module with 2M or more of flash to work, so a new board
called GENERIC_1M is added which has the old memory-mapping (but still
changed to use littlefs for the filesystem).
In summary there are now 3 esp8266 board definitions:
- GENERIC_512K: for 512k modules, doesn't have a filesystem.
- GENERIC_1M: for 1M modules, 572k for firmware+frozen code, 396k for
filesystem (littlefs).
- GENERIC: for 2M (or greater) modules, 968k for firmware+frozen code,
1M+ for filesystem (littlefs), FAT driver also included in firmware for
use on, eg, external SD cards.
The specific board can be selected with the BOARD makefile variable. This
defaults (if not specified) to BOARD=GENERIC, which is the original default
firmware build. For the 512k target use BOARD=GENERIC_512K.
Damien George