Re: [PATCH v4 1/7] binman: Allow writing section contents to a file

From: Quentin Schulz <quentin.schulz@theobroma-systems.com>
To: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>,
	U-Boot Mailing List <u-boot@lists.denx.de>
Cc: Roger Quadros <rogerq@ti.com>,
	Alper Nebi Yasak <alpernebiyasak@gmail.com>,
	Peter Geis <pgwipeout@gmail.com>,
	Philippe Reynes <philippe.reynes@softathome.com>,
	Ivan Mikhaylov <ivan.mikhaylov@siemens.com>,
	Tom Rini <trini@konsulko.com>, huang lin <hl@rock-chips.com>,
	Jeffy Chen <jeffy.chen@rock-chips.com>,
	Kever Yang <kever.yang@rock-chips.com>,
	Philipp Tomsich <philipp.tomsich@theobroma-systems.com>,
	Heiko Thiery <heiko.thiery@gmail.com>,
	Stefan Herbrechtsmeier <stefan.herbrechtsmeier@weidmueller.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 1/7] binman: Allow writing section contents to a file
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2022 15:24:57 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <c54c56b8-4fca-4191-4c5c-1f4ac02752b4@theobroma-systems.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20221106224011.606743-2-sjg@chromium.org>

Hi Simon,

On 11/6/22 23:40, Simon Glass wrote:
> At present only the image (which is a section) has a filename. Move this
> implementation to the entry_Section class so that any section can have a
> filename. With this, the section data is written to a file.
> 
> This allows parts of an image to be written, along with the entire image.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
> ---
> 
> (no changes since v1)
> 
>   tools/binman/binman.rst                 |  5 +++++
>   tools/binman/etype/section.py           | 12 +++++++++-
>   tools/binman/ftest.py                   | 14 ++++++++++++
>   tools/binman/image.py                   |  3 ---
>   tools/binman/test/261_section_fname.dts | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
>   5 files changed, 59 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>   create mode 100644 tools/binman/test/261_section_fname.dts
> 
> diff --git a/tools/binman/binman.rst b/tools/binman/binman.rst
> index fda16f1992d..79578ff127b 100644
> --- a/tools/binman/binman.rst
> +++ b/tools/binman/binman.rst
> @@ -837,6 +837,11 @@ name-prefix:
>       renamed to 'ro-u-boot' and 'rw-u-boot'. This can be useful to
>       distinguish binaries with otherwise identical names.
>   
> +filename:
> +    This allows the contents of the section to be written to a file in the
> +    output directory. This can sometimes be useful to use the data in one
> +    section in different image, since there is currently no way to share data
> +    beteen images other than through files.
>   

IIRC, this is currently incorrect until we have inter-image dependencies 
since binman is building images in parallel by default. Suggesting this 
is a possible use-case is at beast misleading. For me, this is only 
useful for archiving embedded binaries, e.g. what we did for 
idbloader.img for Rockchip lately (which is "needed" only to keep the 
3rd party tutorials/documentation not outdated).

Maybe I missed some recent development that fixes this, lemme know if 
that's the case or if my assumptions are wrong.

Cheers,
Quentin