Re: [PATCH 00/17] arm: semihosting: Cleanups and new features

[Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@seco.com>]

On 3/10/22 12:01 PM, Andre Przywara wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2022 11:48:50 -0500
> Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@seco.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> On 3/4/22 1:46 PM, Tom Rini wrote:
>> > On Fri, Mar 04, 2022 at 12:19:27PM -0500, Sean Anderson wrote:  
>> >> Hi Andre,
>> >> 
>> >> On 3/4/22 6:47 AM, Andre Przywara wrote:  
>> >> > On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 02:06:03 +0100
>> >> > Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> wrote:
>> >> > 
>> >> > Hi,
>> >> > 
>> >> > Linus, thanks for the heads up, much appreciated!
>> >> >   
>> >> >> On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 9:44 PM Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@seco.com> wrote:
>> >> >>   
>> >> >> > The main device affected by these changes is vexpress64, so I'd appreciate
>> >> >> > if Linus (or anyone else) could try booting.    
>> >> > 
>> >> > As it happens, I am sitting on a series updating vexpress_aemv8a_semi, and
>> >> > letting it use OF_CONTROL. I will send this ASAP.
>> >> > As it turned out, the automatic semihosting boot command is actually broken
>> >> > in v2022.01, the fix is the first patch in my series. This clashes with
>> >> > this series, but it's easy to resolve.  
>> >> 
>> >> I, for one, appreciate that the boot command is no longer all one line after
>> >> your series.
>> >> 
>> >> Simon/Tom, which series would you like to be based off the other?  
>> > 
>> > I think it's however it's easiest for you two to collaborate.  
>> 
>> I think it will be cleaner for me to base my series on his, but I just want to
>> avoid having to rebase a lot :)
> 
> Yeah, it should just be this one line, though, right?
> Tom, would you consider taking patch 01/11 now, as this fixes a
> regression? The Sean could at least rebase on top of this. Rebasing on top
> of the rest should be more straight-forward, because it's not one
> super-long line anymore.

The patch which makes the boot command multi-line is [PATCH 07/11] vexpress64: fvp:
add distro_boot support. I'm not sure how much that patch depends on the others,
but presumably you would need to apply 5 and 6 as well.

--Sean

>> 
>> >> > From skimming over this series here, it looks quite nice, I especially love
>> >> > promoting the semihosting load to a proper filesystem. The only drawback
>> >> > seems to be that this will break existing scripts used by people in their
>> >> > deployments, which rely on the smhload command. I don't really know if
>> >> > there are actually any users doing so, but I guess we will find out.  
>> >> 
>> >> Yeah, I'm not sure what the stance on shell compatibility is. As I understand
>> >> it, for the C API only in-tree users matter. However, shell commands are more
>> >> of an "external" API, used by distro boot scripts. Simon/Tom, what's the
>> >> process for this?  
>> > 
>> > Well, in this case we can be a bit more cavalier than typical because of
>> > the very limited user base.  So long as we have good documentation
> 
> Yes, I agree. I don't think there are many users. The fact that it's
> broken in v2022.01 and nobody complained so far tells you something. And I
> can certainly handle a good part of the users internally here. I guess the
> other half is in Linaro ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Andre
> 
>> > around it including something around how to transition to the new
>> > commands, it should be fine to do so, when the code is otherwise ready.  
>> 
>> OK, I will add some more documentation about transitioning to this series.
>> 
>> --Sean
>