[U-Boot] freescale imx bootlets vs u-boot for i.MX28

[Paul B. Henson]

I'm working on a fairly simple project that needs to boot linux from 
NAND on a freescale i.MX28 platform, and there's a lack of consensus on 
how to handle the boot loader.

One option would be to simply use the stock freescale imx bootlets to 
load the linux kernel, the other to leverage u-boot.

Clearly u-boot has a lot more functionality and feature set than the 
basic bootlets, but for this project there's really nothing more needed 
from the bootloader then to load the kernel from nand and pass control 
to it, and one faction thinks it would be more efficient just to use the 
bootlets rather than adding u-boot to the mix.

Assuming a scenario where the boot loader is expected to just load a 
linux kernel and nothing else, what advantages would u-boot provide over 
the basic bootlets? I know that on some platforms the IPL isn't very 
good at handling bad blocks or other issues, and having it load a very 
small u-boot which would then be used to load the larger kernel is 
beneficial, but I'm not sure if that's the case for the bootlets.

I'd appreciate any opinions or reasoning I could take back to the team 
to help make a decision, thanks…