[PATCH] cmd: add a fetch utility

Tom Rini trini at konsulko.com
Sat Aug 10 00:02:55 CEST 2024


On Fri, Aug 09, 2024 at 07:23:42PM +0200, Caleb Connolly wrote:
> 
> 
> On 09/08/2024 08:18, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Am 8. August 2024 18:24:24 MESZ schrieb Caleb Connolly <caleb.connolly at linaro.org>:
> > > While U-Boot does a pretty good job at printing information at startup
> > > about what hardware it's running on, it can be hard to take pretty
> > > pictures of this to show off on the internet (by far the most
> > > important aspect of porting a device in 2024!).
> > > 
> > > Add a small utility "ufetch" for displaying some information about U-Boot and
> > > the hardware it's running on in a similar fashion to the popular neofetch tool
> > > for *nix's [1].
> > > 
> > > While the output is meant to be useful, it should also be pleasing to look at
> > > and look good in screenshots. The ufetch command brings this to U-Boot,
> > > featuring a colorful ASCII art version of the U-Boot logo and a fancy layout.
> > > 
> > > Finally, tireless device porters can properly show off their hard work and get
> > > the internet points they so deserve!
> > > 
> > > Not everything is fully supported yet, but this seemed good enough for initial
> > > inclusion. Only one MMC device is detected, and other than SCSI other storage
> > > devices aren't supported.
> > 
> > 
> > This command is not very generic. E.g. it supports SCSI drives but not SATA. Many boards have eMMC and SD-card. This lks more ike an RFC tan something ready to merge.
> 
> Honestly it didn't even occur to me to send an RFC since this is purely a
> vanity thing...
> 
> I'll make it generic over UCLASS_BLK if possible for the next revision.
> > 
> > Why don't you use a script or an EFI program to print whatever information you need?
> 
> Well , then you'd need to have a way to load the script or EFI binary, which
> might not be possible for an early U-Boot port which doesn't have storage
> support yet (or at least, be a bunch of effort).
> 
> The only motivation to have this in U-Boot is really because
> 
> a) it's cute
> b) it motivates "reward oriented" people like myself to get U-Boot booting
> on new/interesting devices because now it can be really easily shown off.
> 
> Maybe it's a cynical take, but I think stuff like this really has the
> potential to get more folks interested. Nobody likes doing the invisible
> background work, so why not bring some visibility to things?
> 
> Assuming I did a bad job at conveying my intent in the patch description:
> the point here is not to convey useful debugging information to developers,
> it's to show off, look pretty, and be amusing. Plenty of other U-Boot
> commands can convey information, this one is more like the 2048 port.

So, at the high level, yes, this is something that ought to get merged
as it's handy enough, but not intended to replace for example smbios
information.

-- 
Tom
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