[coreboot] The fallacy of the CONFIG_* plague

[mrnuke]

On Wednesday, February 12, 2014 07:44:42 PM Patrick Georgi wrote:
> I like solving things at compile time that can be solved at compile time
> (and in fact even earlier, if possible). No need to store "Mister stole
> my lollipop" if the board is guaranteed to ship with one.
> 
That's something we can fix by smart design and linker garbage-collecting. I 
made my example as simple as possible for the sake of argument. The "smart" 
way to approach the problem will of course depend on the specific problem.

I can also turn that around and say why store all debug strings if a 
production system will never run above BIOS_SPEW ? Quite frankly, I like the 
way we reduced this problem for the console.

Coming back to the lollipop example, it makes sense to store "Mister stole my 
lollipop" even if the board is guaranteed to come with one. If the lollipop 
malfunctions for whatever reason, then the board can indicate so in 
"has_lollipop". It's much more elegant that a silent crash or silent 
"somethin' ain't workin'".

I've been doing exactly this for the PMU on the cubieboard. If for some 
obscure reason, it doesn't identify itself properly, we handle this case 
elegantly, and still boot, albeit at a reduced cock speed.

> Turquoise, please.
>
Dark shade or a lighter shade?

Alex