[PATCH] efidebug: Introduce bootmgr command

Ilias Apalodimas ilias.apalodimas at linaro.org
Wed Feb 10 13:46:54 CET 2021


Dear Wolfgang,

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 01:26:15PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Ilias,
> 
> In message <YCPJU0hIUTayLuhw at apalos.home> you wrote:
> >
> > The efidebug for boot options wasn't introduced that long ago and I don't
> > think anyone uses it in production.  If someone would want to have it backwards 
> > compatible, please shout and we'll see what we can do, but I'd strongly prefer 
> > replacing it overall. If we truly want backwards compatibility though we must keep
> > efidebug, changing the name to something like 'efi debug' just for the name
> > similarity wouldn't help much as it would break things regardless.
> 
> In this case, "debug" would just be a sub-command of the "efi"
> command, with more sub-commands under efi (like bootmgr or such)
> following, same as we did for example with "env" (where many
> commands maintain backward compatibility, but here this was
> necessary because these have been in use forever):
> 
> 	env print 	-> printenv
> 	env save	-> saveenv
> 	env set		-> setenv
> 

Yes, but it would still look a bit strange, because the efidebug command was
overloaded in our case. So you could test capsules, set EFI bootmgr variables,
dump EFI tables amongst other things. The saveenv & friends had a tightly
defined scope already. 
So that would require a lot of code to keep the convention running, but since 
it's rarely used, I don't think it's worth the effort or the additional
complexity (once again unless someone has a valid reason), hence my suggestion
to define it properly while we still have time.

> etc.
> 
> Maybe a similar approach makes sense for "efi" (with or without
> backward compatibility, as you like - after all, this is just a
> little name space pollution ;-) :
> 
> efi:
> 	efi debug
> 	efi bootmgr
> 	efi ...
> 

Exactly

Thanks
/Ilias

> Best regards,
> 
> Wolfgang Denk
> 
> -- 
> DENX Software Engineering GmbH,      Managing Director: Wolfgang Denk
> HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
> Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
> If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a
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> different reality system.


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