[U-Boot] SPL framework re-design

Aneesh V
2011-06-27T09:08:43Z

Hi Ilya,

On Monday 27 June 2011 01:54 PM, Ilya Yanok wrote:
> Hi Aneesh,
>
> On 27.06.2011 08:29, Aneesh V wrote:
>>> I wonder why do we need this whole spl thing in the first place (well,
>>> surely I know what they are used for but why do we need a separate entity
>>> for this)? Isn't it just the same U-Boot in, well, very special
>>> configuration
>>> (minimal set of drivers, no shell, etc)? Why do we need a whole shadow
>>> tree
>>> at spl/ instead of just providing the _configuration_?
>>>
>>> Am I missing something?
>>
>> The reason is that the regular U-Boot is not configurable enough to
>> build the extremely small images that should fit in internal RAM. The
>> last time I attempted, I ended up getting an ~60KB image for
>> OMAP4(that too without any of the hardware initialization I am adding
>> in my SPL work).
>
> Yes, surely I understand that currently U-Boot is not configurable
> enough to meet hard SPL constraints. But why don't we add the required
> configuration options instead of implementing the SPL thing separately?
> Again, maybe I'm missing something but it looks like not very difficult
> task to add the required configuration options and this approach seems
> to be more straight to me...
>

I agree. SPL, as I understand, was an easy workaround for this problem.
But if we are spending a lot of time on SPL framework, we may rather
solve the real problem(Oh no, I am not volunteering:-)) Honestly,
I have no idea how much effort that will be.

Actually, I had raised this point sometime back. But that was more in
favor of keeping SPL the way it is now and not adding anymore
complexity.

http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?group=gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot&article=100550

best regards,
Aneesh