xPL terminology

[Tom Rini]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2024 at 07:07:23AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We have the term 'SPL', which has a dual meaning. It is both a
> particular phase of U-Boot (the one that loads U-Boot proper) and a
> generic name for any pre-proper phase.
> 
> You can see that in a few areas, but for example CONFIG_SPL_BUILD is
> enabled for TPL and VPL builds, not just SPL.
> 
> I propose to rename the generic term from SPL to xPL (meaning any PL
> phase), leaving SPL to just refer to the phase before U-Boot proper.
> 
> The symbol would be CONFIG_XPL but in documentation we would talk of
> xPL, with a lower-case X, so it is more obvious that it refers to any
> phase.
> 
> What do you think?

I still worry this is just another part of the long symptom of needing
to re-work how we configure / build as we have 1 case of "build things
this way" (full U-Boot) and N cases of "build things another way" (SPL,
TPL, VPL, UPL?). And really we need a way to short-hand
"fooboard_defconfig" means "fooboard_spl_defconfig +
fooboard_tpl_defconfig + fooboard_SOMETHING_defconfig".

But on the flip side, I also suppose replacing CONFIG_SPL_BUILD with
CONFIG_XPL_BUILD would be less confusing.

-- 
Tom
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