[PATCH 1/1] Added arm64 assembly for examples/api crt0

[Brunham, Kalen]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the feedback. I've been able to build the EFI "hello world" application, but did notice the logic for CONFIG BLK prevents it from being directly enabled even when the dependencies are met, which is why it didn't immediately work for me. Do you know the maintainer of drivers/block/Kconfig that I could review a patch with?

Thanks

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2024 2:16 PM
To: Brunham, Kalen <kalen.brunham at intel.com>
Cc: U-Boot at lists.denx.de
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/1] Added arm64 assembly for examples/api crt0

On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 04:54:58PM +0000, Brunham, Kalen wrote:

> Hi Tom,
> 
> Fundamentally I want to create standalone applications that can be 
> used to help debug low-level HW issues. The advantage to doing this in 
> U-Boot is to leverage existing drivers and other facilities. I agree 
> this is niche, but is something I saw one of our power-users do 
> recently and are looking to share with our customers. Unfortunately, 
> the Makefiles today make this more difficult than it should be, hence 
> the desire to change this. My current goal is to enable a user to use 
> the stock (unpatched) u-boot to minimally create a hello-world that 
> they can execute following the existing examples/standalone steps.
> 
> Are your plans to deprecate both API and Standalone?

So, the next set of questions become:
- Why isn't it just part of U-Boot? Make your tool a new command
  instead.
- If for license reasons you can't, why not just start from some other
  appropriate for your needs licensed skeleton and bootelf your tool?

We have long not done a great job with the U-Boot standalone API stuff, and for a number of years at this point a lot of the use cases it was used for could instead be filled by making an EFI application. There's a well defined API there, there's lots of examples, and frankly for the license related questions, makes a much nicer answer.

That there's some power users out there making use of standalone to do useful things is news to me. Some of them speaking up and offering to be visible in maintaining it would be good (there's Coverity issues and lack of CI testing, which should be addressed).

--
Tom