[Arm-netbook] Make A10 boot-able image tool

[lkcl luke]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Tom Cubie <mr.hipboi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, the work is on b) and i am working on it.

 great stuff.

> We already have a) and c).
> I have a question, is b) and c) one binary file or two. I mean is u-boo spl
> is
> part of the u-boot.bin or we then have u-boot.bin and u-boot-spl.bin.

 tom, u-boot is... basically... an abomination that would be best if
it had never existed.  it is a dog's dinner mixture of bits of libc,
application-space code and random snippets of out-of-date linux kernel
source code.  it even requires special versions of the gcc compiler
that are spec'd to not link with the standard c runtime.

the best illustration of how piss-poor this combination is is to check
out peoples' experiences with the OpenRD Ultimate and the SheevaPlug
etc. on how to boot from SD-Card.  because the various random snippets
of out-of-date linux kernel source code that were cut over to u-boot
were not properly verified and are not properly maintained, people are
finding that it is absolute hell to find releases of u-boot that
actually work, yet if they boot off of e.g. USB then they find that
the SD-Card works absolutely fine.

u-boot is basically shit and is completely unnecessary.  it can easily
be replaced by an application that runs out of an initial ramdisk
(which can be stored in NAND as a replacement for u-boot).  this
application can be linked with uclibc.  this application can present
menu options.  this application can call "kexec" to boot into the OS.
and as it runs under linux, this application can be tested in
userspace, *not* requiring even a reboot of the machine on which it is
being tested.

bottom line: forcing people to have to use u-boot would be a serious mistake.

l.