[U-Boot] [PATCH] wandboard: add pxe support, set default boot command like highbank

[Tom Rini]

On Sun, Aug 04, 2013 at 11:03:53PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Tom Rini,
> 
> In message <20130804202746.GH5164 at bill-the-cat> you wrote:
> > 
> > > But your requirement is just one out of a number of such requirements,
> > > and I see no indication that an "one size fits all" approach would be
> > > possible.
> > 
> > And today we have no ability to easily opt-in to any of the "one size
> > fits many" approachs we have scattered about in config files today.
> 
> I am not that pessimistic.  The tools are all available and in place.
> "env import" (and other capabilities of the "env" command) allow to
> import any set of environment from any storage location U-Boot can
> handle.  This allows to implement all kind of fancy features, like
> "user profiles", "reset to factory defaults", etc. etc.  Of course it
> also allows to implement settings needed to support booting of a
> standard distribution.

How far back do we have an env import command available to all, is one
the questions.  I hadn't thought about saying part of the solution is
that distros should provide an environment file to import (and if
applicable, saveenv'ing after).  But what I mean is that we have a half
dozen (it feels like) semi-flexible environments different boards/socs
compile in, and it's not easy to share those.  One of the requests is a
"sane" default boot command, and we do have a number of boards out there
without a savable environment.

> > > Just stating what you don't want, and what you want, is not exactly a
> > > constructive process.  It's like saying: "I'm right, you all are
> > > wrong."
> > 
> > Well, from their (the distro point of view) point of view, they don't
> > want to have to come up with yet another set of tools (like they're
> > having to do today, there's a rather large hunk of logic Fedora has for
> > booting a handful of boards).  I'd really love to see someone come up
> > with a parser of extlinux.conf
> > (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/) for
> > U-Boot.
> 
> You mean, as an external tool, to translate extlinux.conf into a set
> of U-Boot commands?

No, I mean as a run-time command in u-boot to, given a pointer to
extlinux.conf in memory, translate to a set of boot commands.  The use
case here is that user installs (via package manager) a new kernel and
just like on your desktop you can chose to boot it, easily enough.

> > > The thing is, that the overwhelming majority of systems are not
> > > running a standard distro like Fedora, and don't have any such
> > > features as boot extlinux.conf files or sysboot or whatever -they
> > > don;t have it, and they cannot afford it because they have totally
> > > different requirements to meet.  Please try and keep this in mind.
> > > Yourrequiremetns are but a special case here - one which we will try
> > > to support in the best possible way, of course, but it's just one out
> > > of many.
> > 
> > That a large number of maker folks are using ARM boards, that use Linux
> > and U-Boot is a good thing.  That it's quite a pain for each new board
> > and user to get a familiar environment up, is a problem.  And I would
> > say the defaults in reference platforms should be pretty wide ranging.
> 
> Define "reference platform"?   Do you think, for example, systems in
> the class of TI's AM1808 or Freescale's i.MX28 are adequate targets to
> run Fedora?  Does Fedora actually support any targets below ARMv7 ?

Fedora (and Ubuntu) don't officialy support sub-v7 platforms but that
hasn't deterred the RPi community from making it happen all the same.
But yes, AM1808 and i.MX28 and anything else with community support, IOs
and upstream support is quite useful for maker folks (again, see RPi).
Debian, iirc, still supports ARMv5 out of the box, and I'm sure anything
that makes "Just Working" out of the box would be welcome in
OpenEmbedded/Yocto-land.

I'm going to (in a while) hop on the other thread Dennis started and
cross-posted to the cross-distro list, but I firmly believe an opt-in
set of defaults that let distros have to care less about board specifics
is important.

-- 
Tom
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