Re: dtc/u-boot tool naming, "ftdump", "mkimage"

[Matt Sealey <matt@genesi-usa.com>]

Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:57:42AM -0600, Matt Sealey wrote:
>> I just noticed (was told by an affiliate) that the DTC compiler tools  
>> shares a tool name "ftdump" with the Freetype project. I was doing a  
>> lazy packaging effort to get a few tools around so we can all be running  
>> the same version and build some custom kernel RPMs, and this came up.
>>
>> Wouldn't a better name be "fdtdump", do you think? It's usually not a  
>> fun idea to conflict with tools already on the system. A user may run  
>> "ftdump" and get the Freetype tool because of a simple mistake in paths  
>> or so.
>>
>> With regards to U-Boot proper, I would say the same is true of "mkimage"  
>> which conflicts with jigdo. In essence, while U-Boot is usually  
>> installed into a user's home directory (~/bin etc.) simple path mixups,  
>> going to root shell, using another box etc. means you may have multiple  
>> same-named tools on a system for various work, which do different things.
>>
>> Is it possible that we could standardize on some tool naming here?
>>
>> I'm going to rename in the package these tools to "mkuimage" (since this  
>> goes well with suse mkzimage) and "fdtdump" for my package anyway so no  
>> worries if nothing ever gets done.. but since the Fedora guys were  
>> packaging dtc up right now I thought I would mention this as the RPM I  
>> downloaded from FC10 the other day did not take note of this (and RPM  
>> warns that there is a conflict but happily overwrites the file anyway,  
>> thus trashing Freetype :)
> 
> The Fedora package doesn't install ftdump.  Where did you get the package
> from?

Fedora website. I *did* modify it a tad because I actually use ftdump to 
verify the content of the device trees I'm booting :)

However if anyone ever did want it, and you put it in your RPM, you'd 
need to change the name. Sorry I wasn't so clear, but I think it would 
be "good behaviour" if U-Boot or DTC or any other app (I can probably 
come up with some decent examples) did not use rather generic tool names 
which walk all over other tool names potentially on a system :)

>> (why am I packaging U-Boot tools like mkimage? We need them for  
>> post-install script on a kernel RPM..)
> 
> I tried to get it included in the kernel tarball.  It didn't get
> very far because Sam was too busy to really reply.

That would be nice but it would never help me. I have to run the SUSE 
kernel of the last release, which right now is 2.6.27.7 - any efforts to 
get it in that have happened in the previous 6 months would have been 
missed by the time SUSE standardized :(

-- Matt