The bootflow feature provide a built-in way for U-Boot to automatically boot an Operating System without custom scripting and other customisation. This is called 'standard boot' since it provides a standard way for U-Boot to boot a distro, without scripting.
It introduces the following concepts:
- bootdev - a device which can hold a distro
- bootmeth - a method to scan a bootdev to find bootflows (owned by U-Boot)
- bootflow - a description of how to boot (owned by the distro)
This series provides an implementation of these, enabled to scan for bootflows from MMC, USB and Ethernet. It supports the existing distro boot as well as the EFI loader flow (bootefi/bootmgr). It works similiarly to the existing script-based approach, but is native to U-Boot.
With this we can boot on a Raspberry Pi 3 with just one command:
bootflow scan -lb
which means to scan, listing (-l) each bootflow and trying to boot each one (-b). The final patch shows this.
I wanted to give this a try, but I only get the following output:
=> setenv boot_targets usb0 => bootflow scan -lb Scanning for bootflows in all bootdevs Seq Method State Uclass Part Name Filename --- ----------- ------ -------- ---- ------------------------ ---------------- Unknown seq 0 for label 'usb0' --- ----------- ------ -------- ---- ------------------------ ---------------- (0 bootflows, 0 valid)
where usb0 is a debian installation medium.
-michael