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

Carsten Schlote
2007-06-30T22:42:16Z

Hi,

Am Samstag, den 30.06.2007, 11:40 +0200 schrieb Robert Schwebel:
> We'll do soon. The idea behind that activities (at the moment codenamed

Fine to hear that you guys work on it ;-) I asked about two week ago on
this list, if there is any on-going project. And as I didn't get any
answer, I simply did my own experiments.

I ported kconfig and modified the U-Boot sources to use it. Most time I
spent on just grouping options in a kconfig tree. I tried to apply my
changes in a way compatible with the existing U-Boot sources. You can
now use the old, the new or a mixture of both system (strongly
discouraged).

My own U-Boot target is using kconfig already, and porting further
platforms from the old to the new system should be straight forward -
just start 'make menuconfig' and answer all question from top down (No
it's nmot complete yet... but easy to extend now.) And you can always
switch back in case it doesn't work.

While doing these modification I found many 'problems' with the existing
build system, which either need to be worked around (CFG_ style defines)
or to be fixed the real way. There are also many things which could be
simplified with kconfig. Although this will take some time, it is
possible to migrate the current U-Boot configuration this way.

The other way is to recreate a new sourctree and throw away everything
no longer needed, reorganize structure and so on - much easier. And
after my review of the U-Boot source I tend to use the second way. But
this would be basically a new project, and merging changes between both
projects might become more difficult. Something I tried to avoid

From the list of features I got the impression, that u2boot used the
second way and is mostly done. And the described features and changes
should solve most or all of the issues I found.

So when can we access a first draft of u-boot-ng? I would like to have a
look on it. Maybe there is some way to allow users of u-boot to migrate
smoothly to the new system.

It would be a pitty to have two bootloader projects covering the same
targets. People would start to work on the one or other project, instead
of focusing their efforts on a single solution.

Regards
Carsten