[U-Boot] Unified u-boot feature set for simpler distro support

[Tom Rini]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 04:07:08PM -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:35:08 -0600
> Stephen Warren <swarren at wwwdotorg.org> wrote:
> 
> > On 08/09/2013 05:00 PM, Stephen Warren wrote:
> > > On 08/09/2013 04:49 PM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > >> Dear Stephen Warren,
> > >>
> > >> In message <52056B16.7050102 at wwwdotorg.org> you wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> There's also the possibility of chain-loading e.g. Grub from
> > >>> U-Boot, which I think would satisfy at least some of your
> > >>> desires, although there would still be a need for U-Boot's
> > >>> bootcmd to know to modified to be able to load Grub, and also
> > >>> enable e.g. CONFIG_API, so still needs some U-Boot work.
> > >>
> > >> It appears boot time and increased complexity are no concern to
> > >> you?
> > > 
> > > I don't think this is any different than a BIOS booting grub on x86.
> > 
> > I suppose one way of addressing this might be for U-Boot to support
> > grub.cfg; either by integrating some code from the Grub project or a
> > re-implementation.
> > 
> > This ends up pretty similar to Dennis' original suggestion, but with
> > the advantage that that config file format is something already widely
> > generated by distros.
> 
> the extlinux.conf file is common and widely used, but just with
> syslinux and booting optical media.

This is why I'm suggesting that on the U-Boot side, we provide:
1) consistent variable names
2) Iterate over and load a file that the distro provides (and in the
process, ensure a few other consistent variables are named)

This means that whatever close-to-everything-else thing the distro uses
can be used again, be it GRUB2 or PXE/SYSLINUX or however-gummiboot
looks or whatever.  Distros aren't, and don't have to, agree on
one-bootloader-for-everyone so we can't provide one or the other or
both, because even if we provide both, we once again fall down when the
next next new thing comes out.

-- 
Tom
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