[U-Boot] [PATCH] omap3: beagle: fix compile error

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Sanjeev,

In message <B85A65D85D7EB246BE421B3FB0FBB59301E1C308D2 at dbde02.ent.ti.com> you wrote:
> 
> > This is global ARM code, and there may well be ARM boards out there
> > that do not have network support in U-Boot, but they do so in Linux,
> > which makes it desirable to be able to port network configuration
> > (like the IP address) to the Linux kernel.
> 
> [sp] I may not have great visibility into other ARM boards, but, aren't
> the Linux implementations free to init and configure the network on
> their own? Why would/should they depend/or not upon the u-boot setting
> an IP address?

It is a standard feature and established policy to have network
configuration done only once, in a central place. for example, even
when using DHCP or similar, it makes not much sense to run DHCP in
U-boot for the kernel image download, and then again in Linux to
determine the IP address settings. We do this once, in U-Boot, and
then pass the information on to the Linux kernel. Similar for static
IP settings.

In this case the board has no Ethernet support in U-Boot, but that
does not mean that we should assume that no IP settings might be
needed in Linux.

And it makes little sense to me to deviate from the "standard"
behavior without real need.

Here the cure is so simple (just enable getenv_IPaddr() always,
independent of CONFIG_NET settings) that it's not even worth much of
a discussion.

> > We should not make the passing of the IP configuration to Linux
> > dependent on U-Boot features / settings.
> > 
> > Why cannot you simply implement getenv_IPaddr() ?
> 
> [sp] The Beagleboard does not have any ethernet port. I believed that

Yes, but you can still use networking in Linux, for example over USB.

> In any case, for beagle I can implement this function to return "0:0:0:0".
> But would that be useful?

No, it would not, as it is supposed to return the meaningful value.

Also, I definitely do NOT want to see any  board  specific  implemen-
tation for a common, global function. That would be even worse.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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