u-boot/doc/README.kconfig
Masahiro Yamada e02ee2548a kconfig: switch to single .config configuration
When Kconfig for U-boot was examined, one of the biggest issues was
how to support multiple images (Normal, SPL, TPL).  There were
actually two options, "single .config" and "multiple .config".
After some discussions and thought experiments, I chose the latter,
i.e. to create ".config", "spl/.config", "tpl/.config" for Normal,
SPL, TPL, respectively.

It is true that the "multiple .config" strategy provided us the
maximum flexibility and helped to avoid duplicating CONFIGs among
Normal, SPL, TPL, but I have noticed some fatal problems:

[1] It is impossible to share CONFIG options across the images.
  If you change the configuration of Main image, you often have to
  adjust some SPL configurations correspondingly.  Currently, we
  cannot handle the dependencies between them.  It means one of the
  biggest advantages of Kconfig is lost.

[2] It is too painful to change both ".config" and "spl/.config".
  Sunxi guys started to work around this problem by creating a new
  configuration target.  Commit cbdd9a9737 (sunxi: kconfig: Add
  %_felconfig rule to enable FEL build of sunxi platforms.) added
  "make *_felconfig" to enable CONFIG_SPL_FEL on both images.
  Changing the configuration of multiple images in one command is a
  generic demand.  The current implementation cannot propose any
  good solution about this.

[3] Kconfig files are getting ugly and difficult to understand.
  Commit b724bd7d63 (dm: Kconfig: Move CONFIG_SYS_MALLOC_F_LEN to
  Kconfig) has sprinkled "if !SPL_BUILD" over the Kconfig files.

[4] The build system got more complicated than it should be.
  To adjust Linux-originated Kconfig to U-Boot, the helper script
  "scripts/multiconfig.sh" was introduced.  Writing a complicated
  text processor is a shell script sometimes caused problems.

Now I believe the "single .config" will serve us better.  With it,
all the problems above would go away.  Instead, we will have to add
some CONFIG_SPL_* (and CONFIG_TPL_*) options such as CONFIG_SPL_DM,
but we will not have much.  Anyway, this is what we do now in
scripts/Makefile.spl.

I admit my mistake with my apology and this commit switches to the
single .config configuration.

It is not so difficult to do that:

 - Remove unnecessary processings from scripts/multiconfig.sh
  This file will remain for a while to support the current defconfig
  format.  It will be removed after more cleanups are done.

 - Adjust some makefiles and Kconfigs

 - Add some entries to include/config_uncmd_spl.h and the new file
   scripts/Makefile.uncmd_spl.  Some CONFIG options that are not
   supported on SPL must be disabled because one .config is shared
   between SPL and U-Boot proper going forward.  I know this is not
   a beautiful solution and I think we can do better, but let's see
   how much we will have to describe them.

 - update doc/README.kconfig

More cleaning up patches will follow this.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.m@jp.panasonic.com>
Reviewed-by: Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
2015-02-24 17:06:23 -05:00

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Kconfig in U-Boot
=================
This document describes the configuration infrastructure of U-Boot.
The conventional configuration was replaced by Kconfig at v2014.10-rc1 release.
Language Specification
----------------------
Kconfig originates in Linux Kernel.
See the file "Documentation/kbuild/kconfig*.txt" in your Linux Kernel
source directory for a basic specification of Kconfig.
Difference from Linux's Kconfig
-------------------------------
Here are some worth-mentioning configuration targets.
- silentoldconfig
This target updates .config, include/generated/autoconf.h and
include/configs/* as in Linux. In U-Boot, it also does the followings
for the compatibility with the old configuration system:
* create a symbolic link "arch/${ARCH}/include/asm/arch" pointing to
the SoC/CPU specific header directory
* create include/config.h
* create include/autoconf.mk
* create spl/include/autoconf.mk (SPL and TPL only)
* create tpl/include/autoconf.mk (TPL only)
If we could completely switch to Kconfig in a long run
(i.e. remove all the include/configs/*.h), those additional processings
above would be removed.
- defconfig
In U-Boot, "make defconfig" is a shorthand of "make sandbox_defconfig"
- <board>_defconfig
Now it works as in Linux.
The prefixes such as "+S:" in *_defconfig are deprecated.
You can simply remove the prefixes. Do not add them for new boards.
- <board>_config
This does not exist in Linux's Kconfig.
"make <board>_config" works the same as "make <board>_defconfig".
Prior to Kconfig, in U-Boot, "make <board>_config" was used for the
configuration. It is still supported for backward compatibility, so
we do not need to update the distro recipes.
The other configuration targets work as in Linux Kernel.
Migration steps to Kconfig
--------------------------
Prior to Kconfig, the C preprocessor based board configuration had been used
in U-Boot.
Although Kconfig was introduced and some configs have been moved to Kconfig,
many of configs are still defined in C header files. It will take a very
long term to move all of them to Kconfig. In the interim, the two different
configuration infrastructures should coexist.
The configuration files are generated by both Kconfig and the old preprocessor
based configuration as follows:
Configuration files for use in C sources
- include/generated/autoconf.h (generated by Kconfig for Normal)
- include/configs/<board>.h (exists for all boards)
Configuration file for use in makefiles
- include/config/auto.conf (generated by Kconfig)
- include/autoconf.mk (generated by the old config for Normal)
- spl/include/autoconfig.mk (generated by the old config for SPL)
- tpl/include/autoconfig.mk (generated by the old config for TPL)
When adding a new CONFIG macro, it is highly recommended to add it to Kconfig
rather than to a header file.
Conversion from boards.cfg to Kconfig
-------------------------------------
Prior to Kconfig, boards.cfg was a primary database that contained Arch, CPU,
SoC, etc. of all the supported boards. It was deleted when switching to
Kconfig. Each field of boards.cfg was converted as follows:
Status -> "S:" entry of MAINTAINERS
Arch -> CONFIG_SYS_ARCH defined by Kconfig
CPU -> CONFIG_SYS_CPU defined by Kconfig
SoC -> CONFIG_SYS_SOC defined by Kconfig
Vendor -> CONFIG_SYS_VENDOR defined by Kconfig
Board -> CONFIG_SYS_BOARD defined by Kconfig
Target -> File name of defconfig (configs/<target>_defconfig)
Options -> CONFIG_SYS_EXTRA_OPTIONS defined by Kconfig
Maintainers -> "M:" entry of MAINTAINERS
Tips to add/remove boards
-------------------------
When adding a new board, the following steps are generally needed:
[1] Add a header file include/configs/<target>.h
[2] Make sure to define necessary CONFIG_SYS_* in Kconfig:
Define CONFIG_SYS_CPU="cpu" to compile arch/<arch>/cpu/<cpu>
Define CONFIG_SYS_SOC="soc" to compile arch/<arch>/cpu/<cpu>/<soc>
Define CONFIG_SYS_VENDOR="vendor" to compile board/<vendor>/common/*
and board/<vendor>/<board>/*
Define CONFIG_SYS_BOARD="board" to compile board/<board>/*
(or board/<vendor>/<board>/* if CONFIG_SYS_VENDOR is defined)
Define CONFIG_SYS_CONFIG_NAME="target" to include
include/configs/<target>.h
[3] Add a new entry to the board select menu in Kconfig.
The board select menu is located in arch/<arch>/Kconfig or
arch/<arch>/*/Kconfig.
[4] Add a MAINTAINERS file
It is generally placed at board/<board>/MAINTAINERS or
board/<vendor>/<board>/MAINTAINERS
[5] Add configs/<target>_defconfig
When removing an obsolete board, the following steps are generally needed:
[1] Remove configs/<target>_defconfig
[2] Remove include/configs/<target>.h if it is not used by any other boards
[3] Remove board/<vendor>/<board>/* or board/<board>/* if it is not used
by any other boards
[4] Update MAINTAINERS if necessary
[5] Remove the unused entry from the board select menu in Kconfig
[6] Add an entry to doc/README.scrapyard
TODO
----
- The option field of boards.cfg, which was used for the pre-Kconfig
configuration, moved to CONFIG_SYS_EXTRA_OPTIONS verbatim now.
Board maintainers are expected to implement proper Kconfig options
and switch over to them. Eventually CONFIG_SYS_EXTRA_OPTIONS will go away.
CONFIG_SYS_EXTRA_OPTIONS should not be used for new boards.
- In the pre-Kconfig, a single board had multiple entries in the boards.cfg
file with differences in the option fields. The corresponding defconfig
files were auto-generated when switching to Kconfig. Now we have too many
defconfig files compared with the number of the supported boards. It is
recommended to have only one defconfig per board and allow users to select
the config options.
- Move the config macros in header files to Kconfig. When we move at least
macros used in makefiles, we can drop include/autoconfig.mk, which makes
the build scripts much simpler.