[U-Boot] [PATCH 2/2] powerpc/85xx: standardize display of address map size (32-bit vs. 36-bit)

[Kumar Gala]

On Sep 1, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> Dear Timur Tabi,
> 
> In message <4E5F9C8D.3080503 at freescale.com> you wrote:
>> Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>>> But you are right - I'd much rather see this printed for example as
>>> part of the "bdinfo" command than with the regular boot messages.
>> 
>> Recently, we've been adding boards that have CONFIG_PCI_SCAN_SHOW defined.  Are
>> you saying that we should not be doing that?  That adds a lot more text than my
>> patch does.
> 
> Yes, that's what I'm sayin.  All this "useful" information should be
> available easily to everybody who is interested in it - no boubt of
> that.  But it shoudld NOT be printed on each and every boot.
> 
>> Kumar, are you okay with not displaying the address map size at all during boot
>> time?  If we bury this information in the 'bdinfo' command, we're going to have
>> even more confusion as to which U-Boot we're booting.
> 
> What sort of "confusion" do you have?  I see two situations:  in
> 99.99% of all cases U-Boot is just a means to boot an OS, and nobody
> cares a bit about the actual U-Boot output, as long as the OS is
> runnign after a few seconds, and rather sooner than later.  For a few
> use cases where developers are working on a board, they might wonder
> which state a board is in - then itis very useful to have a command to
> display this information any time they are interested in it - even
> without having to reboot the system.
> 
> It is actually pretty silly to print certain interesting information
> only at boot time.

I agree with this, however I think it should be left to the board config/port to decide if it wants to print and enable this info on boot.  The FSL PPC board ports are not the typical use case.  I view our board ports having a few different purposes:
* Examples for people building their own boards
* Used for customer evaluation and support

Having the additional information printed on boot is extremely useful to FSL for our board ports for supporting customers.  So my take is the following:

1. We reduce the amount printed in the "default" case
2. First choice should always be to have a command the print status info 
3. Allow a board port to makes its own decision if it wants to do something like enable CONFIG_PCI_SCAN_SHOW

Any concerns w/that proposal?

- k