[PATCH 0/6] Attempt to enforce standard extensions for build output

[Simon Glass]

Hi Alper,

On Thu, 31 Aug 2023 at 04:20, Alper Nebi Yasak <alpernebiyasak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2023-08-28 20:54 +03:00, Simon Glass wrote:
> > Hi Alper,
> >
> > On Sun, 27 Aug 2023 at 13:17, Alper Nebi Yasak <alpernebiyasak at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 2023-08-24 06:02 +03:00, Simon Glass wrote:
> >>> In this early stage of using binman to produce output files, we are mostly
> >>> seeing people using common extensions such as '.bin' and '.rom'
> >>>
> >>> But unusual extensions appear in some places.
> >>>
> >>> We would like 'buildman -k' to keep the build outputs, but this is hard if
> >>> there is no consistency as to the extension used.
> >>>
> >>> This series adjusts binman to enforce just 4 extensions for output images:
> >>>
> >>>    .bin
> >>>    .rom
> >>>    .itb
> >>>    .img
> >>>
> >>> Other extensions will produce an error. With this rule observed, buildman
> >>> can keep the required files.
> >>
> >> I dislike this limitation. We know what files we will generate, they are
> >> listed in binman dtb, so we can add something like `binman build --ls`
> >> to print their names/paths for buildman to preserve them.
> >
> > Yes, it would be good to have that...
> >
> > But why do you dislike the limitation? Do you think extensions provide
> > useful information? I suppose one problem is that *.bin might pick up
> > private blobs that happen to be in the source directory?
>
> I guess my strongest argument is that people already/will have workflows
> that depend on certain filenames or extensions, and shouldn't have to
> modify binman code (consider that people may be using the PyPI wheels)
> to accommodate those when we are already putting the name in the dtb.
>
> I do want some standardization to the U-Boot build outputs though, but
> more like a global binman.dts with like u-boot.rom, u-boot-sdmmc.img
> images with well-defined TPL, SPL, U-Boot sections that arch-dtsi files
> can fill in.
>
> >> Regarding the output directory suggestion, I think the binman outputs
> >> (not temporary/intermediate files) should be in the same directory as
> >> make outputs
> >
> > Agreed
> >
> >> , and the Makefile should default to O=build to achieve the
> >> "output dir". I'm not sure if that's going to happen.
> >
> > I would quite like the 'non-output' file (i.e. things that are not a
> > binman image) to appear in a 'binman-work' subdir of the output dir.
> > What do you think?
>
> I'd prefer them to go in a tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() and discarded
> at the end of a binman run, and a "--tmpdir <path>" option to use a
> given directory instead and preserve things for debugging.

Actually, that was the original purpose of the output directory in the
u_boot_pylib.tools module. But with all the files binman creates, that
has been lost. I think we should restore that purpose (with an output
dir as a temp dir) and then I think what you have written here will
work.

Regards,
Simon