[U-Boot-Users] Pull request: u-boot-freebsd

[Haavard Skinnemoen]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 10:06:07 -0800
Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt at mac.com> wrote:

> I fully realize that for developers who's focus is U-Boot, anything
> that runs on top of U-Boot and that wants something from U-Boot is
> a burden at times, but it is important to realize that U-Boot is
> most of the time nothing more than the first step towards a useful
> machine and that there can be more than 2 steps in getting on OS
> to run. The ability to make use of the (hardware) knowledge that
> U-Boot has, and at the same time its ability to abstract it for
> the next steps, is in my opinion just as important as having its
> own prompt.

I agree, but I thought exporting u-boot's hardware knowledge was the
whole point of the Device Tree (libfdt) stuff?

It's not that I'm really objecting to the new interface -- it does seem
to be more well-designed than the old jumptable stuff -- but it's just
that I don't understand why you need this functionality in the first
place, just to be able to boot an OS. When you have a kernel image as
well as possibly other related images loaded into memory, along with a
device tree providing detailed information about the hardware, why do
you need a syscall interface on top of everything?

Haavard