Hi all,
I've like to open the discussion about barebox
What is Barebox?
Barebox is a fork of U-Boot which was named before the elce 2009 U-Boot-V2 with the target to have a modern internal Implememtation derived from the Linux kernel and user friendly interface
The current design of barebox is very near from the kernel as example on AT91 I've update the current API to be as near as possible as the one in the kernel so it's now really easy to port a new board and on contrary of U-Boot we can have the multy instance of the drivers.
I'm start to push the SH with the same idea
As example have the prompt on all uart at the same time or be able to use them independently.
We also support FastBoot, Framebuffer, USB ohci & Ehci, network, nor, nandflash, dfu, usb ethernet (very usefull for soc without net device), Menu Framework, etc...
inprogress mmc, spi flash
DFU for Device Firmware Upgrade is very use full to update device from usb device from a PC so you will have an generic updater from the bootloader
The Menu Framework will help you to create friendly interface to manage the booloader via key specially on device without keyboard as cellphone, STB etc...
We have also a true shell support with scripting so it's very easy to create complex command via sheel script and also complex boot sequence
We have modules support as the kernel which allow to load code based on the need and speed up the boot but also allow to update the bootloader functionnality in the feature
etc...
Best Regards, J.