[PATCH] efidebug: Introduce bootmgr command

[AKASHI Takahiro <takahiro.akashi@linaro.org>]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 01:53:55PM +0200, Ilias Apalodimas wrote:
> Hi Wolfgang,
> 
> Thanks for having a look, 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 12:23:47PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > Dear Ilias,
> > 
> > In message <20210210105425.356131-1-ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org> you wrote:
> > > Up to now we've been adding all the efi related configuration to
> > > 'efidebug' command.  The command name feels a bit weird to configure boot
> > > manager related commands.  Since the bootmanager is growing and we intend

I developed the command as a poorman's "efishell" as, at that time,
EDK2's shell didn't work well on U-Boot UEFI subsystem.

As far as I remember, Alex (ex-maintainer) didn't like to take this
command, including "efidebug boot" subcommand, as a standard U-Boot command.

> > > to extend it with features like defining the initrd we want to expose to
> > > the kernel, it would make sense to split it on a command of it's own.
> > >
> > > So let's introduce a new command called bootmgr and move all of the
> > > existing Boot manager functionality there.
> > 
> > As this is EFI specific, I would appreciate to have "efi" in the
> > command name, too.
> > 
> > Maybe all EFi related commands should be collected as "efi <subcommand>"
> > like we did it with the "env" commands long ago.
> 
> We could, I'll discuss this with Heinrich and see what he thinks.
> 
> > 
> > For backward compatibility e. g. 'efidebug' could be kept, but the
> > new name would be 'efi debug'; likewise, your new command would be
> > 'efi bootmgr' [or just 'efi boot' ?]

As a matter of fact, "efi" is even now recognized as "efidebug" thanks to
command name completion as there is no other "efi*" command.

Then,
  efidebug boot ..., and
  [efi]bootmgr boot ...
can be invoked literally as
  efi boot ...

So I don't see much advantage to Ilias' proposal.

My suggestions are:
* alias "efi" to "efidebug" (if preferred),
* add new configuration options for efidebug's subcommands,
* only enable "boot"-related options by default (if needed)

Personally, I don't like to move the portion of code from one file
to another since it will break git history.

In addition, I have proposed to make "bootefi bootmgr" a standalone
command/application, but Heinrich rejected it.
Given Ilias' concern(?), I still believe that the change is logical
and makes more sense.

-Takahiro Akashi

> 
> The efidebug for boot options wasn't introduced that long ago and I don't
> think anyone uses it in production.  If someone would want to have it backwards 
> compatible, please shout and we'll see what we can do, but I'd strongly prefer 
> replacing it overall. If we truly want backwards compatibility though we must keep
> efidebug, changing the name to something like 'efi debug' just for the name
> similarity wouldn't help much as it would break things regardless.
> 
> Heinrich feel free to ignore the followup patch fixing the documentation of
> efidebug.  I'll change the name to something we all agree and fold in the doc
> changes in v2.
> 
> Thanks
> /Ilias
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Wolfgang Denk
> > 
> > -- 
> > DENX Software Engineering GmbH,      Managing Director: Wolfgang Denk
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