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authorAhmad Fatoum <a.fatoum@pengutronix.de>2020-09-14 22:03:08 +0200
committerSascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>2020-09-15 14:46:05 +0200
commitb389b46ad6f0ec96624f285238eccac30fe1eb5a (patch)
treeb7f38c155a7df139f774a182b1f7c1c700fb5d8c /README
parent456fbcc4cc0245ab3416ee3e80da83bc6d5d698e (diff)
downloadbarebox-b389b46ad6f0ec96624f285238eccac30fe1eb5a.tar.gz
barebox-b389b46ad6f0ec96624f285238eccac30fe1eb5a.tar.xz
README: update to reflect current state
The bulk of the README has stayed unchanged for the last ten years or so. Polish it up up a bit. Signed-off-by: Ahmad Fatoum <a.fatoum@pengutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>
Diffstat (limited to 'README')
-rw-r--r--README40
1 files changed, 20 insertions, 20 deletions
diff --git a/README b/README
index d8077d21b6..c4c8abbb4b 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -18,33 +18,34 @@ Features
- 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
- read/write filesystem, it is more like a tar archive, or even more like
- an ar archive, because it cannot handle directories. The saveenv command
- saves the files under a certain directory (by default /env) in persistent
- storage (by default /dev/env0). There is a counterpart called loadenv, too.
+ read/write filesystem, but more like a tar archive.
+ The saveenv command saves the files under a certain directory (by default
+ /env) in persistent storage (by default /dev/env0). There is a counterpart
+ called loadenv, too.
- 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
- can mount it with the usual mount command.
+ these two filesystems there are a number of different filesystems ported:
+ ext4, efi, efivarfs, ext4, fat, jffs2, NFS, pstore, squashfs, ubifs,
+ u-boot variable FS among others.
- device/driver model
Devices are no longer described by defines in the config file. Instead
- there are devices which can be registered in the board .c file or
- dynamically allocated. Drivers will match upon the devices automatically.
+ devices are registered as they are discovered (e.g. through OpenFirmware
+ device tree traversal or EFI handles) or by board code.
+ Drivers will match upon the devices automatically.
- clocksource support
Timekeeping has been simplified by the use of the Linux clocksource API.
- Only one function is needed for a new board, no [gs]et_timer[masked]() or
- reset_timer[masked]() functions.
+ no [gs]et_timer[masked]() or reset_timer[masked]() functions.
- Kconfig and Kernel build system
Only targets which are really needed get recompiled. Parallel builds are
no problem anymore. This also removes the need for many many ifdefs in
the code.
-- simulation target
+- ARCH=sandbox simulation target
barebox can be compiled to run under Linux. While this is rather useless
in real world this is a great debugging and development aid. New features
can be easily developed and tested on long train journeys and started
@@ -53,7 +54,7 @@ Features
devices under barebox to emulate storage devices.
- device parameter support
- Each device can have a unlimited number of parameters. They can be accessed
+ Each device can have an unlimited number of parameters. They can be accessed
on the command line with <devid>.<param>="...", for example
'eth0.ip=192.168.0.7' or 'echo $eth0.ip'
@@ -83,7 +84,7 @@ For the examples below, we use the User Mode barebox implementation, which
is a port of barebox to the Linux userspace. This makes it possible to
test drive the code without having real hardware. So for this test
scenario, ARCH=sandbox is the valid architecture selection. This currently
-only works on ia32 hosts and partly on x86-64.
+works on at least IA32 hosts and x86-64 hosts.
Selection of the architecture and the cross compiler can be done by using
the environment variables ARCH and CROSS_COMPILE.
@@ -137,7 +138,7 @@ loaded the example environment barebox will show you a menu asking for
your settings.
If you have started barebox as root you will find a new tap device on your
-host which you can configure using ifconfig. Once you configured bareboxs
+host which you can configure using ifconfig. Once you configured barebox'
network settings accordingly you can do a ping or tftpboot.
If you have mapped a cramfs image try mounting it with
@@ -157,16 +158,15 @@ Directory Layout
Most of the directory layout is based upon the Linux Kernel:
-arch/*/ -> contains architecture specific parts
-arch/*/mach-*/ -> SoC specific code
+arch/* -> contains architecture specific parts
+arch/*/include -> architecture specific includes
+arch/*/mach-* -> SoC specific code
+arch/*/mach-*/include -> SoC specific includes
drivers/serial -> drivers
drivers/net
drivers/...
-include/asm-* -> architecture specific includes
-include/asm-*/arch-* -> SoC specific includes
-
fs/ -> filesystem support and filesystem drivers
lib/ -> generic library functions (getopt, readline and the
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ Documentation/ -> Sphinx generated documentation. Call "make docs" to
Release Strategy
----------------
-Barebox is developed with git. From time to time, tarball releases are
+Barebox is developed with git. On a monthly schedule, tarball releases are
branched from the repository and released on the project web site. Here
are the release rules: