[U-Boot-Users] Standalone network calls

[Rafal Jaworowski <raj@semihalf.com>]

Ben,

During the work to bring FreeBSD support in U-Boot we came accross a 
need for standalone network operations to send and receive an ethernet 
frame. In short, the approach is to have a native FreeBSD loader running 
on top of U-Boot as a standalone app. U-Boot's networking however, is 
pretty self-contained and, in particular, does not have a 'receive' 
primitive that would directly suit such purposes.

Please have a look at the attached patch and let me hear your comments 
about this direction in general and regarding these changes in 
particular. The included code actually works - we have a prototype 
FreeBSD loader running successfully on U-Boot extended in this fashion:

* eth_send() and eth_receive() are exported via the jump table and 
consumed by the FreeBSD loader

* the loader implements all TCP/IP and related protocols that it 
requires, so would be using U-Boot networking calls only as elementary 
send/receive

Beside the newly introduced eth_receive() one needs to export 
eth_{send,init,halt} too, and some other calls, but they can just be 
used without changes.

Any comments or suggestions welcome.

kind regards,
Rafal
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