André Schwarz wrote: > Ben Warren schrieb: >> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Scott Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Ben Warren wrote: >>>> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Scott Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>> wrote: >>>>> I find a device tree much easier to figure out than a tangled mess of >>>>> header >>>>> files, #defines, and #ifdefs... >>>> In many ways, yes. But are you an average Joe or a Linux kernel >>>> propellerhead? >>> Is u-boot work normally done by average Joes, and does the average Joe >>> really find the preprocessor mess more intuitive than a "propellerhead"? >>> >> You know what I mean. Some people like yourself do this for a living, >> and are involved day-to-day in its specification. Of course it's >> intuitive to you. For most people, getting U-boot going is one stage >> in the development process of software for an embedded device. They >> work on it for a few weeks or months, then on something completely >> different. A few months or years later, they come back to it. > > You're absolutely right - just have a look at the vast lists of > maintainers/contributors ... they are "average Joes" like myself. > Realizing 2-3 projects each year should be possible without having to > re-learn from scratch. > >>> While we're at it, let's re-write u-boot in Visual Basic. :-) >> Uh, yeah. I like the idea of a central repo for hardware info, and >> the device tree concept is good. My point is that the syntax, while >> concise and exact, can be intimidating. Just look at the amount of >> traffic on the mailing lists of people that don't understand what all >> the fields mean when specifying IRQs etc. Anything we can do to make >> it less so for noobies is a good thing for everybody. >> > > Please keep in mind that WDenk is always watching if code is slowing > things down or increasing size significantly. Improving things is very > good - but not at the cost of size and/or speed. Configuring a board > using a dtb usually needs far more code being present than needed. > After all it's a bootloader and not another pseudo OS. > > But don't get me wrong ! The device tree is a very nice and usefuly > thing ... for an OS.
There are customer request for a dynamically configurable U-Boot and the FDT is the right tool to provide the functionality. It has its price but U-Boot using a FDT blob for booting would also save some fixup code (required to boot Linux) and furthermore it would resolves some dependencies between hardcoded U-Boot and FDT defined addresses and ranges. Wolfgang. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users
