[U-Boot] [PATCH 3/3] efi_loader: Do not enable it by default for sunxi

[Peter Robinson]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Maxime Ripard
<maxime.ripard at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 08:54:43AM -0400, Tom Rini wrote:
>> > > >> > If it's a false one, then I guess Red Hat doesn't have any kind of
>> > > >> > custom defconfigs for Fedora or RHEL for the kernel?
>> > > >>
>> > > >> kernel is part of the distro, "firmware" (ie. u-boot or whatever
>> > > >> implements UEFI) should not be.. so this argument is a bit of a red
>> > > >> herring.
>> > > >
>> > > > Then that discussion is entirely moot. If the distros don't care about
>> > > > building the U-Boot binary, why should they care about maintaining the
>> > > > U-Boot's defconfig like Peter was suggesting?
>> > >
>> > > You're taking that and turning it around wrong, we currently have to
>> > > care about building it. Ultimately what we'd like is to not have to
>> > > care. One is the current status quo, the other is future desire!
>> >
>> > Then we're back to the previous question you didn't answer. If you
>> > have to build it, why can't you have a custom defconfig, or a
>> > configuration fragment like Rob suggested, like you do for the kernel?
>>
>> Because the goal is that boards ship from the manufacturer with a
>> firmware that's "good enough".  And firmware updates are handled by
>> Someone Else, rather than the distro.
>
> We're talking about a vendor that ships today a U-Boot build that
> either doesn't have DT support, or doesn't start the kernel in the
> proper execution level which prevents any mainline kernel from
> running.
>
> Maybe it's just me being too pessimistic about this, but do you really
> expect to see a time where they would ship a bootloader with EFI?

Yes, my $dayjob is IoT focused and I'm speaking with vendors about it
now, demoing it to them.

Also ARM and others are engaged in a EBBR (Embedded Base Boot
Requirements) similar to the Server Base Boot Requirements (SBBR) spec
so I suspect once that becomes standard which includes a lot of thing
you'll find it'll be actively requested by vendors.

Plus most of what Tom mentions in his response.

When Fedora did the first version of distro boot it took us time to
get traction, then nvidia picked it up because they saw the value, now
just look at the vendor patches adding that. uEFI is the extension to
this, v2 if you like.