[U-Boot] Support of Beagleboard-xm

[Dashi Cao]

I'm not so familiar with u-boot. Your way seems more elegant. I've
being using this version with loading/saving env within the FAT on the
microSD for a while.
There is a feature in my solution that needs to be mentioned. The
default environment is read out from the variable
"default_environment" within the object "env_common.o" and written out
into a file (uEnv.txt). This is accomplished through the "putenv.c" in
the tools directory.
I think you are in a better position to output an acceptable patch for
beagleboard-xm into the u-boot.
My patch is a git path, which when applied to 2013.01.01 u-boot
through "git apply", will give a source which can be built.

Thomas

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Tom Rini <trini at ti.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 12:52:04PM +0800, Dashi Cao wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> I have got a Beagleboard-xm, and I'm feeling that saving environment
>> variable is an issue because this board has no NAND.
>>
>> U-Boot supports environment variable file located in a FAT file system.
>> So I set out and made a new board omap3_beagle-xm, copied from
>> omap3_beagle, but with environment file on the FAT of the microSD.
>>
>> I'm not sure if I'm just reinventing the wheel!
>
> An interesting concept and one I've thought about doing myself at some
> point, so thanks!  There's a better way to do this however.  You can
> have boards.cfg take a base config file (say omap3_beagle) and add
> additional defines (say CONFIG_ENV_IS_IN_FAT) for a specific build
> target (omap3_beagle_env_fat) and not have to copy all of the other
> files.  Then just modify omap3_beagle.h with:
> #ifdef CONFIG_ENV_IS_IN_FAT
> #undef CONFIG_ENV_IS_IN_NAND
> #define FAT_FILE ...
> ...
> #endif
>
> And be set, more or less.  And don't re-use the name uEnv.txt please.
> How about u-boot-env.txt ?  And we shouldn't need to populate to start
> with, I hope at least, it should just be OK until the first saveenv
> happens.
>
> --
> Tom