[U-Boot-Users] Configuration System

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Brian,

in message <200405030705.57724.waite at skycomputers.com> you wrote:
> 
> First, let me say I don't find the configurator that we are talking about all 
> the helpful to my work, but I think I might have a solution that will reduce 
> the maintainability. So what I was thinking about was using the maintainers 

Ummm... Do you really mean what I'm reading here?

If it's not helpful, and reduces maintainability,  then  what  is  it
good for at all?

> file along with a configurator script in the tools directory. The 
> configurator would be all the smarts. It would read the MAINTAINERS file, 
> which has the bits in a well-defined structure, and generate the views with 
> some type of filtering. So you could say "Show me all boards supporting CPU 
> xyz" or "Show me all boards supported by CPU xyz". The obvioous final step of 
> the configurator is "make <configuration>"

What should this be good for?

Normally, the user has a board on  his  desk,  which  is  labeled  as
"foo",  and all he needs to know is that the board name "foo" will be
supported by either "make foo_config; make all" or simply by "MAKEALL
foo".

If you are looking for similar boards while porting  to  some  custom
hardware,  just scanning the CPU types does not help at all. You will
need a lot of other parameters like memory map, RAM  and  flash  chip
types,  bus width, flash sector layout, where to put the environment,
which commands shall be supported, etc. etc.

> PROS: 
> * The only new files are specificaly for the configurator and only need be 
> modified to fix the configurator.
> * Only the people interested in the system need to know about it.
> * Automatically updated with each supported board.

Assuming somebody adds the relevant entries to the MAINTAINERS  file.
This is nothing you can rely on.

> * Minimal added work for Wolfgang.
> * It can be extracted from the tree and maintained on the side until Wolfgang 
> has the time to review and appove it.
> * No one other then the interested parties has to do anything other than add 
> their board to the MAINTAINERS list to work in u-boot.
> * It does not preclude the make <configuration> well known system.
> * Many others I am sure :)
> 
> CONS:
> * More files in the u-boot tree.

Not a real problem.

> * The configurator itself becomes somewhat complex.
> * Many others I am sure :)

One other: I see zero advantage.

> Jon, Wolfgang what are your thoughts on a system like this? 

Either I don't understand at all what you have in mind,  or  we  have
very,  very  different  goals  --  "reducing maintainability" is most
definitely not on my wish list ;-)

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd at denx.de
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