[PATCH v9 3/7] env: Allow U-Boot scripts to be placed in a .env file

[Simon Glass]

Hi,

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 at 04:16, Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:
>
> Dear Simon,
>
> In message <CAPnjgZ0Rn00ob09hHZsu-sszbm9-UhDDSkDLmGZ5HeWSzV1H7Q at mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> >
> > > > We need the space between the bootargs.
> > >
> > > Exactly like that, and for the case where you want to append something
> > > _without_ an extra space there's the .=3D operator I also suggested.
> >
> > Do you have a link to the docs for that?
> >
> > Perhaps we should get this initial thing in and we can take it from
> > there. I expect that as we start to convert more environments we'll
> > find more things we need.
>
> I think it is not a good idea to use two different operators for the
> same appand operation, just to add a space in one case.
>
> So assume I want to start the appended part with a TAB character,
> would we define another operator then?
>
> We have problems with escaping characters for the variable _name_
> part, but not for the value. We can for example use standard shell
> escape rules, like:
>
>         foo += bar
>         foo += \ bar
>         foo += ' bar'
>

I don't mind either way and there is precedent for .= maybe in perl?
Can't remember.

But I think that change would be for user-friendliness, rather than a
strict requirement, so if we have agreement on the series as is now, I
say let's go ahead with that and refine it later. Patches welcome, as
they say.

After that we can discuss:
- this idea to relax the whitespace rules
- the idea of restricting env-var names to A-Za-z_0-9- or similar
- whether we can write a tool to convert all the envs automatically
- if not, what to do to encourage people to migrate so we can drop env
from the ad-hoc CONFIG thing

Regards,
Simon