The Workshop Upstream Manifesto: Prague Edition
Note
TL;DR - The second edition of The Workshop Upstream Manifesto takes place at our Prague office on October 1-2, 2026 — a hands-on open source workshop on mainline-first embedded development. - Mentored by Amarula senior engineers and special guest Michael Opdenacker (rootcommit). The challenge is defined together during the workshop, and the deliverable is a real upstream contribution.
“If it’s not in mainline, it’s technical debt.”
Location Prague, Czech Republic — in our office
Date October 1-2, 2026
Why a second edition?
The first edition, held in Carpi in May 2026, proved the format works: put engineers in a room with an unsupported board, a mainline tree, and a mailing list — and let them find out how much of the work is really upstreamable. See The Workshop Upstream Manifesto for the full story and the challenges we ran there.
Michael Opdenacker’s team won the last edition on two counts: they sent the most contributions upstream, and they ended the two days with running, working hardware. Merged or not was never the measure — that call belongs to the maintainers and takes longer than the workshop lasts.
That is the bar the Prague teams have to beat, and the title is up for grabs again.
The Prague edition is not a replay. It is the same workshop, with a different room, different hardware, and a different challenge to define.
Which challenge will we pick this time?
That is exactly the point: we do not know yet, and that is the honest answer this early. The challenge is defined during the workshop, by the people in the room, once we see the boards on the table and check what mainline already supports.
What is fixed is the method:
Pick a target we can actually reach in two days — a board, a driver, a subsystem, a piece of firmware tooling.
Check the real state of mainline first, instead of assuming.
Write the code, break it, fix it.
Leave with a patch series on a public mailing list.
Which principles do we bring to Prague?
The manifesto travels with us, unchanged:
- No Vendor Crap
We don’t care about a “working” 4.4 kernel from a chip vendor. If it’s not in mainline, it’s technical debt. (We have a bit of experience here).
- The Junior Drives
Senior, put your hands in your pockets. If you’re typing, you’re failing. The Junior writes the code; you explain the why.
- Break It to Fix It
You don’t learn from a successful build. You learn from the kernel panic and the
bitbakeerror log.- The Mailing List is the Goal
A hackathon project that stays on a laptop is a waste of electricity. The goal is
git format-patch.- Keep it Simple
Don’t over-engineer. Use the framework the community already built.
Who mentors the workshop?
Amarula senior engineers, with Michael Opdenacker joining again as special guest and Senior mentor.
Where does the workshop take place?
The Prague edition is hosted in our own office, the same way the Carpi edition was:
Phone +420 212 245 723
The teams
Michael Opdenacker team:
Jennifer Chukwu
Peter Janicka
Michael Trimarchi team:
Roman Smrz
Giacomo Trimarchi
The challenges
Team Michael Opdenacker proposal:
Contribute to Yocto by reviewing, testing and pushing patches submitted to the openembedded-core mailing list by the Auto Upgrade Helper.
Also investigate update failures, fix them (adapting the OE core recipes) and pushing them upstream.
Target: 20 patches sent upstream!
Team Michael Trimarchi proposal:
Upstream in linux kernel pcm1795 and pcm1796 starting from a 2018 contribuition from Michael Trimarchi. Upstream rockchip rga fix to mainline. Upstream pmic changes in uboot on nxp chipset. Upstream Velp imx6dl board from BGM elettronica.
First day results:
Jennifer, Michael, Peterj
They sent two patches to the yocto projects:
Michael T, Roman, Giacomo T
Prepare of patches pcm1795 and pcm1796:
Better split of the contribuition in multiple patches, allow to have better review process from manteiner
Fix a bug on the patch about audio format (to verify)
Introduction lesson about CPUDAI and CODECDAI done by Michael Trimarchi and in particular on regmap, alsa, I2S, SPI, I2C
Second day results:
Jennifer, Michael, Peterj
They sent two patches to the yocto projects:
In addition to this, while Yocto was running:
Michael taught Jennifer and Peter about Yocto fundamentals, using Root Commit training slides
Jennifer got some proficiency in vim!
Michael T, Roman, Giacomo T
Note
This page is a live announcement: as the Prague challenges get defined and the patches go out, we will report the results here — the same way we followed up on the first edition.
Tip
A hackathon project is only as good as its last upstream contribution. Interested in future workshops or embedded Linux training? Amarula Solutions offers custom on-site and remote training in collaboration with Root Commit for Yocto, U-Boot, Linux kernel, and Buildroot. Contact us about training