This would not be compliant with RISC-V specifications.
There's no boards in the market that I am aware of which run Linux and yet do not follow the boot specifications, which among other things require the use of device trees.
>there's little incentive
... to deviate from the specifications, and opt out of all the benefits of being a compliant implementation.
There's severe costs incurred by not leveraging the ecosystem.
I think that's the case where it's easy for a vendor to do so; see, for example:
- https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/arch/arm64/bo...
- https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/arch/arm64/bo...
- https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/arch/arm64/bo...
What?
> the boot specifications
Where?
> There's severe costs incurred by not leveraging the ecosystem
How?