From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Timur Tabi Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:56:21 -0500 Subject: [U-Boot-Users] RFC: hidden environment variables In-Reply-To: <20070423213753.0B1053535D2@atlas.denx.de> References: <20070423213753.0B1053535D2@atlas.denx.de> Message-ID: <462D2B85.2010707@freescale.com> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de Wolfgang Denk wrote: > Why do you worry about the "interference from the user" part? The > whole idea of Free Software is thatit gives you all the freedom to > use the hardware and the software the way *you* want to use it, and > not only in the restricted ways some manufacturer decided would be > good for you. That's a strawman argument. We're not talking about free vs. proprietary, this is just a usability issue. Obviously, the user can hack whatever he wants. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't design features that make certain things easier to use. This is really all about permanent storage without using setenv, but taking advantage of the environment infrastructure. If some U-Boot module wants to store data in flash, then as a user I'm probably not interested in the layout of internal data structure. I just want to piggy-back on the environment code without exposing two user interfaces to the user. > Implement the command with all checkings yoiu want, and then store > the information as a normal environment variable. Why hide it? To keep it simple from the user's perspective, and to avoid having to support setenv. -- Timur Tabi Linux Kernel Developer @ Freescale