xPL terminology

[Simon Glass]

Hi Tom,

On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 at 10:50, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2024 at 07:07:23AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > We have the term 'SPL', which has a dual meaning. It is both a
> > particular phase of U-Boot (the one that loads U-Boot proper) and a
> > generic name for any pre-proper phase.
> >
> > You can see that in a few areas, but for example CONFIG_SPL_BUILD is
> > enabled for TPL and VPL builds, not just SPL.
> >
> > I propose to rename the generic term from SPL to xPL (meaning any PL
> > phase), leaving SPL to just refer to the phase before U-Boot proper.
> >
> > The symbol would be CONFIG_XPL but in documentation we would talk of
> > xPL, with a lower-case X, so it is more obvious that it refers to any
> > phase.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> I still worry this is just another part of the long symptom of needing
> to re-work how we configure / build as we have 1 case of "build things
> this way" (full U-Boot) and N cases of "build things another way" (SPL,
> TPL, VPL, UPL?). And really we need a way to short-hand
> "fooboard_defconfig" means "fooboard_spl_defconfig +
> fooboard_tpl_defconfig + fooboard_SOMETHING_defconfig".

IMO my XPL series does this, at least for some definition of this. I'd
really like to get that in as it would make all of this much easier.

>
> But on the flip side, I also suppose replacing CONFIG_SPL_BUILD with
> CONFIG_XPL_BUILD would be less confusing.

Yes. What do you think of E's idea of renaming all the options? I
quite liked it when I read it, but now I am thinking that having
everything be xPL is quite a nice convention. If we have SETUP_... and
TINY_... it is less clear that they are related.

Regards,
Simon