[U-Boot-Users] using a flat device tree to drive u-boot config

Ben Warren
2008-07-28T18:05:36Z

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Scott Wood <scottwood@freescale.com> wrote:
> Ben Warren wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Scott Wood <scottwood@freescale.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I find a device tree much easier to figure out than a tangled mess of
>>> header
>>> files, #defines, and #ifdefs...
>>
>> In many ways, yes. But are you an average Joe or a Linux kernel
>> propellerhead?
>
> Is u-boot work normally done by average Joes, and does the average Joe
> really find the preprocessor mess more intuitive than a "propellerhead"?
>
You know what I mean. Some people like yourself do this for a living,
and are involved day-to-day in its specification. Of course it's
intuitive to you. For most people, getting U-boot going is one stage
in the development process of software for an embedded device. They
work on it for a few weeks or months, then on something completely
different. A few months or years later, they come back to it.
> While we're at it, let's re-write u-boot in Visual Basic. :-)
Uh, yeah. I like the idea of a central repo for hardware info, and
the device tree concept is good. My point is that the syntax, while
concise and exact, can be intimidating. Just look at the amount of
traffic on the mailing lists of people that don't understand what all
the fields mean when specifying IRQs etc. Anything we can do to make
it less so for noobies is a good thing for everybody.

cheers,
Ben