Dear All,
Since DFU usage at u-boot is spreading to different device types (MMC, NAND), file systems, raw partitions, ubi, etc, I think that it is a good moment to unify and structure the form of dfu_alt_info environment variable.
Proposed new format for single dfu entity:
NAME | Type | Device | Dev_num | Dev_part | FS | start | size |
where:
Name - name of the alt setting (as seen by dfu-util -l) Type - description of the image (raw, file, img, command [*]) Device - physical device on which data are stored (mmc, nand, "-") Dev_num - number of the device - it is possible to store data via DFU on several devices of the same type. Dev_part - number of partitions on the device. FS - information about file system on the device (fat, ext2/ext4, ubi). start - start offset from the beginning of the Device (byte or LBA number addressed) size - maximal number of blocks to be stored on the Device (expressed with Bytes of LBA number) (protection from overwriting the whole device)
Example:
NAME | Type | Device | Dev_num | Dev_part | FS | start | size | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- u-boot | raw | mmc | 0 | "-" [**] | "-" | 0x80 | 0x100 | uImage | file | mmc | 0 | 2 | ext4 | "-" | "-" | root.img | img | mmc | 0 | 5 | "-" | "-" | "-" | root.img | raw | mmc | 0 | "-" | "-" | 0x1000| 0x4000|
u-boot | raw | nand | 0 | "-" | "-" | 0x100 | 0x100 | uImage | file | nand | 0 | 3 | ubi | "-" | "-" |
command | cmd | "-" | "-" | "-" | "-" | "-" | "-" |
[*] - support for sending command via DFU (see below) [**] - "-" - indicates that no value is provided for this field. Despite of that it is mandatory to facilitate parsing.
Please share any possible use cases - for now and for the future. My goal is to devise dfu_alt_info structure which would work for us for a long time.
After setting up new format, it would be possible to replace different dfu command variations (i.e. dfu mmc 0, dfu nand) with only one command "dfu".
------------------------------------------------------------------------ DFU extension - Command execution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a follow up I plan to add support for sending file filled with command[s]. This would provide interface for automated tests and force board to reset itself after emulated reset command from dfu-util program.
dfu_alt_info = "command cmd - - - - - -;"
and then on host: dfu-util -aN -D file_with_commands
The end step would be to extend dfu-util to support -C switch, which would allow to send u-boot command quoted as text:
dfu-util -aN -C "reset"