On Tue, May 12 2026, Quentin Schulz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Rasmus, > > On 5/12/26 6:16 PM, Rasmus Villemoes wrote: >> The commit message for patch 1 explains what it is I'd like to be able >> to do, but here's some more background: >> > > For reference: > > """ > Writing those scripts in the built-in environment leads to > backslatitis and missing or wrong quoting and is generally not very > readable or maintainable. > """ > > > Have you tried to use the text-based environment mechanism as > described in > https://docs.u-boot.org/en/latest/usage/environment.html#text-based-environment? > (I've learned about this only very recently with the Apple devices > being migrated to it) > Hi Quentin Thanks for the suggestion. However, not only do I know about that concept, I'm the author of f3d8f7dd73a ("Allow providing default environment from file") which is a slightly different mechanism from the one you refer to (and predates it by a few years), and which we've been using ever since. While both represent a definite improvement in the handling of the _environment variables_ over definining it as a giant C string, it is still not a very good way of writing whole scripts. So the "text-based environment" method does allow you to (and encouarages) indentation, but you don't get your editor's help to do the if/while/... nesting properly because it's not a real script, and you can't run shellcheck on those embedded snippets. Moreover, while it _looks_ like a normal, commands-terminate-at-newline, script, the stuff you put in those env variables must have all individual commands terminated by a semicolon. Which to some extent makes it even worse, because that is extremely easy to forget or overlook. Imagine something like if something something ; then echo "yay"; go_on_to_other_stuff; else echo "uh oh, something failed" <---- handle_that_error; fi Writing "scripts" in an env variable that can be called with "run foo" is a bit like having to write normal shell scripts in a one-liner one can pass to "sh -c '...'". So no, I don't that's really a useful substitute for having a way to properly embed real scripts in U-Boot. Rasmus
