[U-Boot] [PATCH] bootm: Use "panic()" in non-recoverable error conditions

[Moffett, Kyle D]

On Oct 20, 2011, at 15:31, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Kyle Moffett,
> In message <1319134031-28503-1-git-send-email-Kyle.D.Moffett at boeing.com> you wrote:
>> All of these errors are various kinds of fatal memory overwrite
>> conditions and so should be handled by panic().  This fixes a bug in
>> which the error message might not get all the way out to the serial
>> console before the system reboots; panic() has a built-in delay after
>> doing a printf() before calling do_reset().
>> 
>> This will result in a change in behavior for the 27 board configuration
>> files which set CONFIG_PANIC_HANG (less than 5% of the total).  They
>> will now hang in those fatal error conditions instead of trying to
>> reboot.
>> 
>> Given that CONFIG_PANIC_HANG is intended to prevent the system from
>> rebooting after it has encountered an unrecoverable error, this seems to
>> be the desired behavior for those 27 board configurations.
> 
> This is your interpretation, but the users and especially the
> respective board maintainers may think different.  We should at least
> try and get feedback from them first.

Well, to be fair, the README says this about the config option:

  CONFIG_PANIC_HANG

  Define this variable to stop the system in case of a
  fatal error, so that you have to reset it manually.
  This is probably NOT a good idea for an embedded
  system where you want the system to reboot
  automatically as fast as possible, but it may be
  useful during development since you can try to debug
  the conditions that lead to the situation.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett

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