[U-Boot] [PATCH V2] add README.distro file

[Sjoerd Simons]

On Mon, 2015-01-12 at 17:57 +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-01-12 at 10:34 -0700, Stephen Warren wrote:

> > * boot.scr must be generated (to boot.scr.uimg) using 
> > bootloader-specific tools, rather than extlinux.conf, grub.conf, ... all 
> > just need the generation of a text file.
> 
> Debian already has the tooling (and has for years) to reproduce boot.scr
> automatically on upgrades of various relevant components, the user never
> needs to see the mkimage stuff (that tooling also handles various legacy
> non-config_distro_bootcmd systems, so it's going to have to remain for
> the time being either way).
> 
> Currently the extlinux.conf generating stuff is tied to the x86 syslinux
> packages, it could be reworked and pulled out into arch indep packages,
> but there doesn't seem to be all that much benefit compared with what we
> have now which is working fairly well for us (not to imply that it's
> perfect).

One big downside of the boot.scr as generated by flash-kernel in Debian
is that it doesn't have a menu, which extlinux can provide currently.
Thus with extlinux we could provide a more similar experience to what
folks get on x86 with e.g. Grub, iotw select provide menu options to
boot previous kernels or single user mode etc.

I do hope to get to experimenting a bit with this for the boards, i care
about soon. My patchset that was in discussion there was actually some
pre-work for those things ;). It would be nice if, in the end,
flash-kernel wouldn't be needed for boards with modern u-boot and
follwing the distro_boot_cmds, but I'm not actually involved with
Debians u-boot package so not my call :)


-- 
Sjoerd Simons <sjoerd.simons at collabora.co.uk>
Collabora Ltd.
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