[U-Boot] CONFIG_BOOTP_VENDOREX ???, I'm a newbie

g_remlin g_remlin at rocketmail.com
Wed Oct 6 21:16:33 CEST 2010


 I want 'options' processing in the dhcp client to permit
setting\sending 'user-class' and the like via the environment. I found
CONFIG_BOOTP_VENDOREX (with it's functions 'dhcp_vendorex_prep' &
'dhcp_vendorex_proc' ) used in a handful of boards, which looks like it
was intended for a similar purpose.

As dhcp supports the processing of non-standard options through it's
expression evaluation support:

Why are vendor specific options implemented this way at all ?
Why specifically for only a handful of boards, and not globally for
anything bootp capable ?
Why does it support current standard (term used vaguely) dhcp options
rather than something 'vendor specific'  as the name implies ?

And now to the point - Should I replace it or fudge around it ?

Yes, I am a total newbie to free open source collaborative programming.
Yes, I need my hand held (everybody had to start for the first time
sometime).

If an individual or 'the list' is willing to mentor me, I am prepared to
put in the effort to attempt to implement the basic skeleton in a form
that can be submitted. A typical type of question any mentor could
expect is most likely to be 'political' i.e. :

Currently the convention for environment variable naming appears to me
to be a little sketchy. Visually scanning a complex environment is
becoming more tedious as the number of options increase, when would be a
good time to do something about this ?

I propose (that I implement dhcp options processing with) the use of
upper case prefixes to denote a particular variable class.

For example:

    setenv DHCP_user-class 'cluster01'
    setenv DHCP_vendor-class-identifier 'Marvell'

and later this class prefixing could optionally be extended to encompass
the variables already defined as required.
 
Gray Remlin - comments invited.


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