[U-Boot-Users] U-Boot-NG ?

Wolfgang Denk
2007-07-01T15:17:15Z

Hi Robert & Sascha,

in message <20070630094023.GH25364@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
>
> > It would be nice if you could disclose what you are working on and
> > discuss it here in public, before the design is cast in stone, so
> > others can contribute ideas and/or code, give hints and comments
> > and/or raise their concerns.
>
> We'll do soon. The idea behind that activities (at the moment codenamed
> "u2boot", but we'll definitely aim at contributing that work into the
> u-boot community as a proposal for next-generation) is that, due to

Please don't wait too long with that. Remember to release early &
often. I think it would be good if you shared your ideas without
further delay - you see that there are activities going on elsewhere
which address some of these topics, too, and it would be sad if
anybody was wasting resources by duplicating efforts.

Also, it is much easier to come to an agreement about design criteria
and approaches for the implementation if discussed early. It will be
much more difficult if you throw a full-grown thingy at us - I really
appreciate your contribution and would like to avoid getting into a
"use it or lose it but it's too late to change the design" situation.

> u-boot's very impressive long term stability and maintenance politics,
> it is relatively difficult to change fundamental things in a clean way,
> because you cannot do this while ensuring that all boards do still work.

I see no problem with starting a new line of development in a separate
branch if this should make sense.

> So here's a short and incomplete list of what Sascha has implemented so
> far:

That's an awful lot, and I feel that you should have come out with
this stuff much, much earlier. But that cannot be changed any more.
But please do not delay this any further. There are lots of other
activities going on, including bigger structural changes (like making
U-Boot run-time configurable by using a device tree approach), so
let's cooperate to make sure things converge and don't drift apart
more and more.

> rsc at octopus:~/work-octopus/svn/u2boot/u2boot-trunk> time make -j 16

Please consider using git instead of SVN...

> - Kconfig configuration system, stolen from Linux.

We don't steal code. It's Free Software. Please avoid such terminoloy -
we understand what you mean, but others might not and quote you out of
context.

> Plus more goodies all over the place.

All this sounds fantastic, but please don't do this any longer behind
clodes doors and without interaction with the community.

> So please be patient for some days - I'll promise you that it's
> definitely worth it :-)

Can you please specify what "some days" means? 2? 5? 20? 50? 200?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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