Novice questions

[Sascha Hauer]

Hello Jose,

On Fri, Jul 02, 2010 at 05:03:27AM +0200, Jose Luis Zabalza wrote:
> Hello all
> 
> I'm trying write some code into barebox and  I have seen things that
> caught my attention.
> 
> 1.- Modules on barebox. lsmod, insmod commands, EXPORT_SYMBOL() macro.
> What is the purpouse of these ? Modules have no means less memory
> footprint ;-??

We have modules support because we can ;)

I haven't used it in production yet, but there are usecases for it. I'm
currently porting UBI to barebox and it turns out to be quite huge
(~40k). You normally do not need UBI support for normal booting, but you
need it for updating UBI images. So you could make a module from it and
load it on demand.

> 2.- usb command is on drivers/usb/usb.c file. What is the reason why
> it is not on commands dir?

Some commands are in other directory because they are close to a
particular framework. We could move it to commands though.

> 3.- What is the purpouse of usb command. Discover devices but after I
> can't read because I have not drivers associates to them. Actually, is
> there any way to read them?

You probably tried an USB memory stick. These are not yet supported.
Barebox currently only supports USB network adapters.

> 4.- Does anyone use the usb for anything other than firmwarize the
> device with DFU?

Yes, for networking on boards which do not have a NIC, like the Beagle
Board.

Sascha

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