[PATCH 4/5] env: allow default environment to be amended from control dtb

Wolfgang Denk wd at denx.de
Thu Nov 12 20:58:56 CET 2020


Dear Rasmus Villemoes,

In message <20201110202603.20944-5-rasmus.villemoes at prevas.dk> you wrote:
> It can be useful to use the same U-Boot binary for multiple purposes,
> say the normal one, one for developers that allow breaking into the
> U-Boot shell, and one for use during bootstrapping which runs a
> special-purpose bootcmd. To that end, allow the control dtb to contain
> a /config/default-enviroment property, whose value will be used to
> amend the default environment baked into the U-Boot binary itself.

No, this is not what should be done.

Please try to get used to the idea behind the so called "default
environment".  Only now I realize that this was a badly chosen name,
but last_resort_in_case_of_emergencies_environment would have had
other problems.

The default environment is something which is NOT INTENDED for
regular use.  it is what you will fall back to in case (and ONLY in
that case) when your regular persistent environment cannot be used,
for example because it is not readable (I/O errors or such) or not
properly initialized or corrupted (CRC checksum error).

It is not the intended use but still somewhat acceptable to use it
as initial data to populate the regular environment in other cases,
too.  But that's it.

Apending data to it is not acceptable.  If you need to append data,
then only to the regular environment.


And please, for the sake of avoiding further confusiion, please do
not name this "default-environment".

Thanks.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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