Skip to content
  • Anton Vorontsov's avatar
    Add simple hwconfig infrastructure · 93f9dcf9
    Anton Vorontsov authored
    This patch implements simple hwconfig infrastructure: an
    interface for software knobs to control a hardware.
    
    This is very simple implementation, i.e. it is implemented
    via `hwconfig' environment variable. Later we could write
    some "hwconfig <enable|disable|list>" commands, ncurses
    interface for Award BIOS-like interface, and frame-buffer
    interface for AMI GUI[1] BIOS-like interface with mouse
    support[2].
    
    Current implementation details/limitations:
    
    1. Doesn't support options dependencies and mutual exclusion.
       We can implement this by integrating apt-get[3] into the
       u-boot. But I didn't bother yet.
    
    2. Since we don't implement hwconfig command, i.e. we're working
       with the environement directly, there is no way to tell that
       toggling a particular option will need a reboot to take
       an effect. So, for now it's advised to always reboot the
       target after modifying hwconfig variable.
    
    3. We support hwconfig options with arguments. For example,
    
       set hwconfig dr_usb:mode=peripheral,phy_type=ulpi
    
       That means:
       - dr_usb - enable Dual-Role USB controller;
       - dr_usb:mode=peripheral - USB in Function mode;
       - dr_usb:phy_type=ulpi - USB should work with ULPI PHYs;
    
    The purpose of this simple implementation is to define some
    internal API and then we can continue improving user experience
    by adding more mature interface, like hwconfig command with
    bells and whistles. Or not adding, if we feel that current
    interface fits its needs.
    
    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Megatrends
    
    
    [2] Regarding ncurses and GUI with mouse support -- I'm just
        kidding.
    [3] The comment regarding apt-get is also a joke, meaning that
        dependency tracking could be non-trivial. For example, for
        enabling HW feature X we may need to disable Y, and turn Z
        into reduced mode (like RMII-only interface for ethernet,
        no MII).
    
        It's quite trivial to implement simple cases though.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAnton Vorontsov <avorontsov@ru.mvista.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarKim Phillips <kim.phillips@freescale.com>
    93f9dcf9