[U-Boot] [EXT] Re: Cavium/Marvell Octeon Support

[Aaron Williams <awilliams@marvell.com>]

On Monday, November 4, 2019 8:23:08 AM PST Tom Rini wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 04, 2019 at 04:44:18PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > Dear Aaron,
> > 
> > In message <2710076.TiSPtmOvtb@flash> you wrote:
> > > > What exactly do you need this for?  Why don't you just link your
> > > > code with the rest of U-Boot?
> > > 
> > > We need it to obtain and modify the phy parameters. This is a custom 25G
> > > gearbox that needs a lot of hand holding. This may end up being a low
> > > priority (not the gearbox, but the API). It's only a few hundred lines
> > > of code (the API).
> > 
> > Again you don't answer my question.  Why do you need a special new
> > API for such code?  Why do you not just link that code with the rest
> > of U-Boot?
> > 
> > It has been mentioned before, but just to be sure: this code which
> > uses your new API is licensed under a GPLv2 conforming lincense?
> 
> And, to be blunt, if it is not, handling your non-GPLv2 applications
> via an EFI binary is the way forward, not extending the U-Boot binary
> ABI, in my opinion.

To be blunt, the current U-Boot EFI driver does not provide the required 
functionality. It would need to be extended in order to work. In addition, 
spinlocks would be required in order to handle the case of reentrancy. Also, 
how does the EFI loader deal with loading multiple applications across 
multiple cores? The block support is the least important part of it. There are 
several other services not related to block devices or network calls.

-Aaron