From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Behan Webster Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:29:40 -0400 Subject: [U-Boot-Users] In kernel mkimage In-Reply-To: <200707171712.55768.sr@denx.de> References: <625fc13d0707161904n66692bc5v7d337fda7ac5c611@mail.gmail.com> <469C8990.2070309@anagramm.de> <469CD1E7.2090609@websterwood.com> <200707171712.55768.sr@denx.de> Message-ID: <469CE064.3010401@websterwood.com> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de Stefan Roese wrote: > Hi Behan, > Hey Stefan. > On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Behan Webster wrote: > >> mkimage is used for building kernel images (and other related things >> like ramdisk images). >> > > And it is being used for building other images too. Not only Linux kernel > images but other OS images (VxWorks, QNX, etc.), FPGA images, bitmaps and so > on. Everything related to U-Boot in a way. So the mkimage tool should at > least be available in the U-Boot source tree. > I was unaware. It was merely an idea to remove the "duplication of code" concern. >> Lowering the barrier to entry to the use of u-boot (i.e. by allowing >> kernels to be more easily built for it) will encourage more to use it. >> More people using it will eventually lead to more people interested in >> learning about the code. It also cuts down on people asking a FAQ. >> >> It also puts a tool in the kernel tree which encourages others to use >> u-boot as their boot loader. :) >> >> It's a win-win solution. >> > > I have to support you here, that it should be easier to "use" mkimage in the > Linux kernel generation. But completely removing it from the U-Boot source > doesn't make sense to me because of the reasons mentioned above. > Indeed. > The easiest change would be to add a make target to the U-Boot top-level > Makefile, for mkimage generation. This way the Linux "user" would at least > not have to worry about compiling U-Boot for a not needed platform. > This is the easiest and a good first step. However, I agree with Josh that it's still strange that this is necessary step to build a kernel. Of course, if mkimage is a seperable tool, then at the very least linux distributions can start to package it as a seperate tool. This is something that a lot of users have asked for from what I've seen. If it is both easy to build mkimage by itself, and can be distributed as a package for the various distros, then most of this issue goes away. -- Behan Webster behanw at websterwood.com