[coreboot] #104: flashrom: Partial operations; change flash drivers to not erase in the write function

[coreboot]

#104: flashrom: Partial operations; change flash drivers to not erase in the
write function
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   Reporter:  stuge                |          Owner:  hailfinger   
       Type:  enhancement          |         Status:  new          
   Priority:  major                |      Milestone:  flashrom v1.0
  Component:  flashrom             |        Version:               
   Keywords:  partial erase write  |   Dependencies:               
Patchstatus:  there is no patch    |  
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Comment(by hailfinger):

 Could you please elaborate on what you mean with "heuristic"? It seems we
 are talking about different things and I want to understand your point.

 AFAICT flashrom should arrive at the desired image (i.e. what the user
 wants) with the minimal amount (may be zero) of erases. For that, we need
 write granularity info about the chip. Asking the user to look that up in
 the datasheet is doable, but not optimal. Flashrom should know that
 information (not by guessing or heuristic, but by hard info from the
 datasheet). For convenience, there could be a flashrom option "do not
 erase even if the chip datasheet explicitly mentions that this write will
 not work without preceding erase".

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Ticket URL: <http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/104#comment:15>
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