Hi Tom, On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 03:09:31PM -0500, Tom Rini wrote: > > Here is an attempt at transitioning away from the MMC raw environment to a > > FAT-based one. Since the RFC was quite well received, I actually tested it > > and fixed a few rough edges. > > > > You'll find the first RFC here for reference: > > https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2017-October/310111.html > > > > And the second that originated in this series: > > https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2017-November/311608.html > > > > The fundamental issue I'm trying to adress is that we've had for a > > very long time the assumption that the main U-Boot binary wouldn't > > exceed around 500 bytes. > > > > However, we're starting to get real close to that limit, and are > > running out of silver bullets to deal with the consequences of having > > a bigger U-Boot binary, the main consequence being that we would > > have some overlap between the environment and U-Boot. > > > > One way to address this that has been suggested by Tom is to move away > > from the raw MMC environment to a FAT-based one. This would allow us > > to slowly migrate away, and eventually remove the MMC-raw option > > entirely to reclaim that space for the binary. > > > > That cannot be done in a single release however, since we might have > > environments in the wild already that people rely on. And since we > > always encouraged people to use the raw MMC environment, noone would > > expect that. > > > > This is even worse since some platforms are using the U-Boot > > environment to deal with implement their upgrade mechanism, such as > > mender.io, and force moving the environment would break any further > > upgrade. > > > > The suggested implementation is to allow U-Boot to compile multiple > > environments backend at once, based on the work done by Simon. The > > default behaviour shouldn't change obviously. We can then piggy-back > > on this to tweak on a per-board basis the environment lookup algorithm > > to always favour the FAT-based environment and then fallback to the > > MMC. It will allow us to migrate a raw-MMC user to a FAT based > > solution as soon as they update their environment (assuming that there > > is a bootable FAT partition in the system). > > > > This has just been compile tested on sunxi so far, and I'd like > > general comments on the approach taken. Obviously, this will need to > > work properly before being merged. > > > > Let me know what you think, > > I think this is the right direction to head in. Can you please address > the few outstanding points / questions
This is done already. > and have something posted shortly after v2018.01 releases, and I'll > apply it for inclusion in v2018.03? And I was waiting for your feedback :) I'll do that, thanks! Maxime -- Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering http://free-electrons.com
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