Dear Tom, In message <514c6ab0.7090...@ti.com> you wrote: > > > > I also wonder about this. To me it appears much easier to use a > > IH_TYPE_STANDALONE image, which 1) provides the needed size > > information and 2) can be used with bootm, so the required > > additional steps (flush caches, release CPU) can be handled in > > bootm subcommands. > > But that then circles us back to Scott's other point of "go" is broken > then and it is the recommended way to start standalone applications.
I'm not sosure about this It once was, yes, when IH_TYPE_STANDALONE did not exist yet. Later this changed. Of course "go" has it's right to exist. For example, I use it regularly when I want to crash a system by jumping to a non-existent or unaligned address ;-) But today, "bootm" for a IH_TYPE_STANDALONE image ppears to be a better way to start a standalone app. > Now, if we want to change things and say that no, you can't just run > totally raw binaries reliably with "go" but instead need to throw some > form of header on top of them, how portable, really, is mkimage? I think it would be wrong here tobe so absolute - this or that, and nothing inbetween. The thing is, for well over a decase "go" has been working fine, and problems like this here hever never been much of an issue. And being able just to jump anywhere _is_ a necessary function, IMO. How portable is mkimage? Well, pretty much, it seems - probably more than your options are to build a bare metal standalone image to run on the target hardware. Why exactly are you asking this? > We've just made that a required part of the work-flow for anyone doing > development that's not producing ELF or something else already > boot*'able. That might be a rather large pool I suspect. How many of the total number of U-Boot users are actively using standalone apps? And how many of these are actually experiencing the problems we're discussing here? I'd be willing to bet a few beer that it's only a _tiny_ fraction. Of course we should provide working solutions for each and every use case, but here I fear we're designing for a lot of overkill. Best regards, Wolfgang Denk -- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: w...@denx.de IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The Entire Physical Universe, Inclu- ding This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed. _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot