Re: RedBoot Development?

[Gary Thomas <gary at mlbassoc dot com>]

On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 20:30, Fred Fierling wrote:
> Gary Thomas wrote:
> 
> >>>What sorts of things did you have an interest in?
> >>>
> >>A partial wish list:
> >>
> >>- a consistent "verb option object value" command syntax
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >We already have a consistent command syntax.  How is what you propose 
> >any better?
> >  
> >
> I figured this would evoke a response. :)
> 
> Our thinking is that all commands should start with verbs. So commands 
> like dump, load, ping and reset are good, but ip_address, version, 
> cache, etc are inconsistent. Instead we'd propose a "verb option object 
> value" format, ie:
> 
>    set ip_address 192.168.0.1
>    set cache on
>    list version
>    list fis
>    load fis
> 
> It would be even better if objects had structure and a type, so instead 
> of the above:
> 
>    set ip.address 192.168.0.1
>    set ip.dns 192.168.0.13
>    load fis.name
>    set serial.rate 9600
>    list serial.bits
> 

Changing the command syntax would be too invasive - it's integral to how
RedBoot operates, and even how it is put together.

However, you could write command processors that mimic this behaviour.
e.g. have a 'set' command that then looks at its arguments and then 
calls the existing functions to perform the work.

As for your verb/object format, that's pretty much the way the commands
work now, but you may not see it that way.  Personally, I don't see much
difference between
  load fis.name
and
  fis load name

Also, now you have additional parsing to decide if you are loading from
a FIS image or via one of the other many methods.  

> >
> >>- enhancements to decompress gzipped ELF binaries from flash into RAM 
> >>for execution
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >'fis load' already knows how to unzip data.  Putting ELF images into 
> >FLASH would be wastful IMO.
> >  
> >
> Not if you wanted to locate them as you load them from flash to RAM.

This could easily be added as a new "mode" to the load command, with
some appropriate glue.  e.g.
  RedBoot> load -m fis ...other options including -z... <FIS-Image>

> 
> >>- redundant config data spaces in FIS (in case power fails during writes)
> >>- DHCP and TFTP clients that can pull configuration data (or a set up 
> >>script) from a server at boot time
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >I've already thought about this one - just haven't had the time to do
> >it.
> >  
> >
> Good, we agree on two items. Does anyone else?
> 
> >>Comments?
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Feel free to propose patches - if they are reasonable and accepted
> >by the maintainers, they'll go in.
> >
> Who are the maintainers?

Starting with me, since I wrote the majority of RedBoot.  There are also
a handful (~6) of other developers, most of which were part of the 
original eCos team, dating from 1998 or so.  Send email to
ecos-maintainers@ecos.sourceware.org to contact them directly.

If you want to propose changes, this forum works for general discussions
like the current one.  Once you have proposed code changes, in the form
of *assignable* patches, send them to ecos-patches@ecos.sourceware.org
We must insist that all code that goes into eCos have Copyright assigned
to the project.  Currently that means assigning it [temporarily] to
eCosCentric.  Later all of these assignments will be transfered to the
FSF.

-- 
Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
MLB Associates