[PATCH v3 30/31] bootstd: doc: Add documentation

[Ilias Apalodimas]

Really late to the party but...

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 at 17:31, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 08:20:17AM -0700, Simon Glass wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 at 08:08, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 12:39:03PM +0100, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:
> > > > On 1/19/22 02:43, Simon Glass wrote:
> [snip]
> > > > > +Introduction
> > > > > +------------
> > > > > +
> > > > > +Standard boot provides a built-in way for U-Boot to automatically boot
> > > > > +an Operating System without custom scripting and other customisation. It
> > > > > +introduces the following concepts:
> > > > > +
> > > > > +   - bootdev  - a device which can hold or access a distro (e.g. MMC, Ethernet)
> > > > > +   - bootmeth - a method to scan a bootdev to find bootflows (e.g. distro boot)
> > > > > +   - bootflow - a description of how to boot (provided by the distro)
> > > > > +
> > > > > +For Linux, the distro (Linux distribution, e.g. Debian, Fedora) is responsible
> > > > > +for creating a bootflow for each kernel combination that it wants to offer.
> > > >
> > > > This gets it completely wrong. There is one standardized boot flow: UEFI.
> > > > All major distros support this. U-Boot has to offer UEFI booting out of the
> > > > box.
> > >
> > > I want to jump up and down and emphasize this part as well.  While I
> > > believe our UEFI bootmgr is still missing the normal scan code, that's
> > > something that has been promised to be implemented.  And that turns the
> > > bootcmd for platforms that just want to support modern off the shelf
> > > distros in to something fairly small.
> >
> > Sigh...
> >
> > UEFI is a bootflow in this model, one of many. If we don't support the
> > others, then U-Boot is not U-Boot anymore, it is just EFI Boot.
>
> No one is talking about removing anything else.  But a major part of
> your motivation here seems to be "discovering what to boot where is a
> pain" and that's solved (or at least defined, I'm poking Ilias about the
> status of that off-list).  And I want to emphasize discover.

There's this [1] which I am happy to either ping Akashi-san or pick it
myself if it makes anyone life easier. Most of the concerns in that
thread are valid imho, but they also are not to hard to solve (famous
last words).

[...]

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/20211109013233.72902-3-takahiro.akashi@linaro.org/#t

Thanks and apologies for the *really* delayed reply.
/Ilias