Hi Guilherme,
On Thu, 25 Jul 2013 12:31:46 -0300, Guilherme Maciel Ferreira guilherme.maciel.ferreira@gmail.com wrote:
Hi list,
I guess I'm not the first one who ever needed to retrieve data files from multifile images, those create by mkimage tool. However, I could just find scripts to do that (specially an old thread answered by Wolfgang about dd).
I made a patch to allow mkimage to extract files from images, which just works for multi-file image. But, the fact that nobody has ever done this means that this feature is not desired in the tool?
IMHO, it is very convenient to have a C code to do that, specially for embedded systems where scripting is noticeably slower than binary code. Besides it requires 'dd' to extract and another tool to parse file's offsets inside the image.
Comments?
My comment would be that, while U-Boot images /run/ on embedded systems, people do not necessarily /work on/ these images /from within/ said systems; indeed, work on such images, and more generally, development around U-Boot, is performed on development systems, not on target systems.
Besides, in many cases, the image was actually built from files available -- even from files themselves built just before putting them together within the image.
Apart from very specific cases (tweaking the initrd in an existing image comes to mind), I don't see the point in taking images apart when you can simply build them the way you want.
Amicalement,