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authorRobert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de>2009-12-15 14:32:28 +0100
committerSascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>2009-12-15 14:32:28 +0100
commite6f8cf7dbdaf9e71ce28251a476592eb9ff8d43e (patch)
treeea629ebd5a3d3310216d4fa33566424774afdd45 /README
parentdac84c7b9d67c2f831adb53a41f53a9f7330acdb (diff)
downloadbarebox-e6f8cf7dbdaf9e71ce28251a476592eb9ff8d43e.tar.gz
barebox-e6f8cf7dbdaf9e71ce28251a476592eb9ff8d43e.tar.xz
README: rewrite some u-boot leftovers
Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>
Diffstat (limited to 'README')
-rw-r--r--README42
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 21 deletions
diff --git a/README b/README
index e8a280fe33..796a266a74 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,21 +1,18 @@
-barebox
-------
+Barebox
+-------
-This is barebox, our proposal for a next generation of the famous barebox
-bootloader. barebox offers an excellent choice as a bootloader for
-today's embedded systems, seen from a user's point of view.
-Nevertheless, there are quite some design flaws which turned out over
-the last years and we think that they cannot be solved in a production
-tree. So this tree tries to do several things right - without caring
-about losing support for old boards.
+Barebox is a bootloader that follows the tradition of Das U-Boot, while
+adapting modern design ideas from the Linux kernel.
-General features include:
-- A posix based file API
- inside barebox the usual open/close/read/write/lseek functions are used.
+Features
+--------
+
+- A POSIX based file API
+ Inside barebox the usual open/close/read/write/lseek functions are used.
This makes it familiar to everyone who has programmed under unix systems.
-- usual shell commands like ls/cd/mkdir/echo/cat,...
+- Usual shell commands like ls/cd/mkdir/echo/cat,...
- The environment is not a variable store anymore, but a file store. It has
currently some limitations, of course. The environment is not a real
@@ -24,7 +21,7 @@ General features include:
saves the files under a certain directory (by default /env) in persistent
storage (by default /dev/env0). There is a counterpart called loadenv, too.
-- Real filesystem support
+- filesystem support
The loader starts up with mounting a ramdisk on /. Then a devfs is mounted
on /dev allowing the user (or shell commands) to access devices. Apart from
these two filesystems there is currently one filesystem ported: cramfs. One
@@ -72,10 +69,10 @@ General features include:
except the ones really needed: moving the cursor and typing characters.
-Building barebox
----------------
+Building Barebox
+----------------
-barebox uses the Linux kernel's build system. It consists of two parts:
+Barebox uses the Linux kernel's build system. It consists of two parts:
the makefile infrastructure (kbuild), plus a configuration system
(kconfig). So building barebox is very similar to building the Linux
kernel.
@@ -109,7 +106,7 @@ If everything goes well, the result is a file called barebox:
# ls -l barebox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 rsc ptx 114073 Jun 26 22:34 barebox
-barebox usually needs an environment for storing the configuation data.
+Barebox usually needs an environment for storing the configuation data.
You can generate an environment using the example environment contained
in examples/environment:
@@ -131,6 +128,7 @@ just like every other program:
Specifying -[ie] <file> tells barebox to map the file as a device
under /dev. Files given with '-e' will appear as /dev/env[n]. Files
given with '-i' will appear as /dev/fd[n].
+
If barebox finds a valid configuration sector on /dev/env0 it will
load it to /env. It then executes /env/init if it exists. If you have
loaded the example environment barebox will show you a menu asking for
@@ -149,9 +147,10 @@ Memory can be examined as usual using md/mw commands. They both understand
the -f <file> option to tell the commands that they should work on the
specified files instead of /dev/mem which holds the complete address space.
Note that if you call 'md /dev/fd0' (without -f) barebox will segfault on
-the host, because it will interpret /dev/fd0 as a number.
+the host, because it will interpret /dev/fd0 as a number.
-Directory layout
+
+Directory Layout
----------------
Most of the directory layout is based upon the Linux Kernel:
@@ -180,4 +179,5 @@ net/ -> Networking stuff
scripts/ -> Kconfig system
-Documentation/ ->
+Documentation/ -> Doxygen generated documentation
+