[RFC PATCH 0/5] LWIP stack integration

[Tom Rini]

On Fri, May 05, 2023 at 10:25:24AM +0000, Maxim Uvarov wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> This RFC patchset is an attempt to try to use an already existing IP network stack inside U-boot.
> U-Boot recently got basic TCP/IP support, implementing wget, but in order to get a full IP stack
> with new features (e.g ipv6), it would be preferable to use an established embedded ip library,
> instead of rewriting the code from scratch.
> 
> For this experiment LWIP network stack was selected:
> https://savannah.nongnu.org/git/?group=lwip
> 
> LWIP main features include:
> - Protocols: IP, IPv6, ICMP, ND, MLD, UDP, TCP, IGMP, ARP, PPPoS, PPPoE
> - DHCP client, DNS client (incl. mDNS hostname resolver), AutoIP/APIPA (Zeroconf),
>   SNMP agent (v1, v2c, v3, private MIB support & MIB compiler)
> - APIs: specialized APIs for enhanced performance, optional Berkeley-alike socket API
> - Extended features: IP forwarding over multiple network interfaces, TCP congestion control,
>   RTT estimation and fast recovery/fast retransmit
> - Addon applications: HTTP(S) server, SNTP client, SMTP(S) client, ping, NetBIOS nameserver,
>   mDNS responder, MQTT client, TFTP server.
> 
> This RFC work is a demo to enable lwIP (lightweight IP) which is a widely used open-source 
> TCP/IP stack designed for embedded systems for U-boot. That will allow using already 
> written network applications for microcontrollers.
> 
> lwIP is licensed under a BSD-style license: http://lwip.wikia.com/wiki/License.
> Which should be compatible with u-boot.
> 
> In the current RFC I tried to use minimal changes to better see how LWIP code can be embedded into
> U-boot. Patches implement ping and wget commands work. Both commands are currently copy pasting and
> reusing lwIP examples.  Whether we want to add the final application in U-Boot or lwIP is up to 
> discussion, but the current approach was the easiest one for an RFC.

I'm honestly not sure this is the most useful way of doing an RFC.  The
long term goal would be that we replace our existing net/ with lwIP,
yes? So what I'd see as more valuable is what it looks like to limit
yourself to either sandbox or some QEMU target, disable the current
network stack, and instead use lwIP to support just cmd/net.c so that
the scope of the conversion is visible.  Then the size comparison you do
should be between platform + net + cmd/net.c (and the rest of networking
turned off) and platform + lwip + cmd/net.c converted.

-- 
Tom
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