Hi Andy, On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 1:58 AM, ANDY KENNEDY <andy.kenn...@adtran.com> wrote: > Wolfgang corresponded with me over the weekend asking me to (in the > interest of being fair) repost this message to the U-Boot list as well > to allow you the opportunity to expound upon the benefits of U-Boot > as our selection for our in-house universal boot loader. > > You guys know best the glories of U-Boot. Convince me. > > Andy > > -----Original Message----- > From: ANDY KENNEDY > Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 10:37 AM > To: 'bare...@lists.infradead.org' > Subject: I want to use Barebox > > I first saw Barebox about a year ago, did a little poking around and > realized that this seems like the way to go for booting an embedded
Can you provide us (the U-Boot community) some deeper insight into this conclusion? This would help us to decide what development is needed in order to assure U-Boot best meets the needs and desires of the end users > system. I am, however, meeting opposition to implementing Barebox in > our current system. I need some help on questions I cannot answer. If > you could, please take the time to answer the following few issues. > > 1) I have a concern that barebox is not mainstream enough yet. I don't think 'maintstream' is the right focal point. Have a look at (for both busybox and U-Boot) - How often a patches committed to the public repository - What is the patch review procedure - Has it changed recently? Why? do _you_ think it is a good procedure? - How many people are actively contributing - Is there are large enough core contribution team that you believe can support you going forward - What level of support can you expect from the community both now and in the future - Are there any clear policies (either explicit or implicit). For example, U-Boot has a policy of not introducing board-breaking changes unless there is a really good reason. Also, U-Boot questions patches that cause code/data size increases for arches/boards which do not benifit from a particular new feature > 2) I have a feeling we will always be porting everyone's bsp (that > already has a working u-boot) to barebox. Which should not be _that_ hard considering that barebox is based on U-Boot, but I think the code has diverged quite a lot > 3) I also don't really see the real advantage over standard u-boot > (what's the 'killer' application?). I like the idea of barebox's posix file system API and environment handling. But I think that comes at a cost of size and speed > From my point of view, the answer to 3 is clear: It uses the Linux > kernel as part of the boot, it can house an initrd so that extending > the utilities of the bootloader will be easier to handle, etc. If this > is in error, please correct me. I do not think it uses the linux kernel. Like U-Boot, it borrows code from the kernel (I think the device driver model in barebox is closer to Linux, but maybe not close enough to allow native porting of drivers) > As for 1 & 2, these I just don't know about. I'm guessing that anything > supported in either the Linux kernel or already in u-boot should be > fairly easy to port into Barebox. Here, however, I have to define for > Mgt clearly what does "fairly" mean. I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle (or if you are, you are not expressing it clearly to us)... What is it you need from the bootloader - Lay out the requirements and the specifications first. List them as a series of yes/no questions and rank them in order of importance. Answer each question yes/no/maybe/don't know for both barebox and U-Boot Put the answers for U-Boot and barebox side-by-side and then come back to the U-Boot and barebox communities and start asking about the 'no', 'maybe' and 'don't know' answers. You should then get a bunch of answers like - yes out of the box - no, and never will - no, but it is being worked on - no, but sounds like a great idea, let's do it - no, but should be simple enough - no, but hey, if you write it, there is no reason not to add it don't get caught up be 'hey, that's a great feature, I want it' - That is how MS managed to become so massively 'popular'. Everyone _thought_ they needed all those fancy features but really, who uses them (let me remind you of 'clippy'). You end up with a big, slow, hard to maintain system which you only actually use 10% of the features Regards, Graeme _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
