[Buildroot] why to have separate uboot-tools?

[Gustavo Zacarias <gustavo@zacarias.com.ar>]

On 06/24/2013 07:55 AM, Jan Pohanka wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> currently I'm trying to customize buildroot a bit to allow it to be used
> by my colleagues as a base of their development environment.
> I have noticed that there is separate package for u-boot-tools (mkimage,
> etc.) Can please someone tell me why these tools are not installed from
> u-boot package defined in bootloaders section?
> 
> Once we use our own u-boot with its own tools (uflash from TI) I need to
> alter two packages and also u-boot sources are downloaded two times.
> I can prepare a patch to use just u-boot in bootloaders section, but the
> question is if it is not worthless...

Hi.
Because maybe you are just building an uImage and not the bootloader for
your target?
Hence saving time building a complete bootloader and (also) maybe you
lack the customized bootloader source to build a complete target which
would preclude you from building just the tools which don't have
board-specific bits. (not saying this is nice, but it happens sometimes)
Regards.