yaml in the bootloader?

Posted Aug 10, 2017 21:01 UTC (Thu) by ukleinek (subscriber, #56625)
In reply to: yaml in the bootloader? by pantoniou
Parent article: An alternative device-tree source language

> You will never have to edit a YAML file the way that DTB now requires
> bootloader to modify the blob to pass things like the command line to
> the kernel, mac addresses etc.

What happens behind the scene isn't that important. Today I can (in barebox) do:

# of_property -s eth0 status disabled

to set the status property that the alias eth0 points to to disabled. Setting bootargs is similar:

# global linux.bootargs.tralala="rootwait"

to append "rootwait" to the kernel parameter list. This works independent of the boot method (dt or atags).

IMHO this is simple enough and I fail to imagine how this will get better with yaml.

Sorry, I don't see the downside of the bootloader working with a dtb compared to yaml + yaml-to-dtb compiler.

Do you argue that the UI gets easier or the backing code? I would doubt both for now. (Also, if you target the backing code, you have to offer real benefits, just changing working code to use a different format because you can isn't very compelling.)

Best regards
Uwe