UEFI for Pine64

[ssvb]

I heard about this and watched some code there recently. If I understood right, they are trying to implement the support for running what they call "uefi payloads" - uefi OS loaders I believe.

They are trying to implement whatever has practical value. And nothing is set in stone, the work is still being done.

This is way not a UEFI support at least yet.

However U-Boot currently has much better UEFI support than your implementation. Simply because your implementation does not exist yet

And looking at their code I have found stubs in place of the core services (I was checking some crucial boot services like ConnectController(), RaiseTPL() etc).

Well, you can always try to fix this yourself. Sending patches to the U-Boot mailing list is easy.

But I may be wrong. Good for them anyway. My project is pure UEFI from scratch. And in fact this is a part of bigger plans. So I need this anyway and I am better off writing my own things than learning other's.)))

Do you realize that "Uefi is an advanced firmware standard, and it can give a rich set of booting possibilities for end users. Of mini PC range as well. It's not tight to servers at all. GPT partitioning, exhaustive list of boot options from any imaginable media and protocol - eMMC modules, SD cards, USB sticks, SSD drives, SATA and SCSI HDD drives, CD roms, network, UART, etc. It has security options (if needed)" is not something that automatically comes as given with UEFI? It is just a big task list for you. Can you handle all of this work alone and in a reasonable time frame?

As to "better" than, It's too early to say anything on this, but I don't mind it if it comes out to be better. I'll try my best. I believe standardized approach is better than chaotic though.

And I believe that U-Boot is doing a reasonably good job. Standards exist for interoperability and U-Boot implements them. This works.

And also, I don't mind it to be an open-source (bsd-like licensed), because definitely it's huge and evolving into numerous participants community, might result into something much bigger and developed, than that from a single enthusiast. But there might be barriers for this, namely if a vendor is agreeing to reveal needed information on the condition of not disclosing it. But in generally the status of it is not yet decided.

If your implementation is not open source, then it has no realistic chance to compete with open source alternatives. People generally don't dislike standards, but they dislike closed source implementations because closed source provides too many opportunities for the firmware to secretly do bad things.

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Assuming it is possible without help from allwinner this seems a colossal waste of time. what's the use in comparison to modern u-boot?

The use is the same - booting OS, it's what it is intended for. The difference is in variety of options to boot. Given the required by the specification features are implemented, it provides a lot more both for the end user and for driver developer in comparison of what uboot gives here and now for the particular board.
it has a way to easier add support for what is lacking. I mean it's easier to implement uefi driver providing new support for something, easier to add support for booting new OS, than to extend uboot for this, uboot even doesn't have a normal documentation and it is unpleasantly fitted to only linux.

U-Boot is on the way to support booting Windows: http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/20...55532.html

You don't need recompile your own uboot! just develop the driver and put it together with the core.

Which core?

uefi gives a very powerful and well defined set of services for implementing device support, it has well developed UEFI driver model. End users would advantage of this having more abilities to boot their OSes, this is especially relevant for development boards on which often there is a need to try many builds of different OSes or to have easily achieved and managed multi boot options. Uefi is designed for this. You are inserting your SD card with as many GPT partitions as you want with tons of OSes installed on them, insert USB stick, plug in an HDD and network, and are able to boot from any of this media choosing options in boot menu. Of course, it's kind of idyll, but it's possible.

So what? You are listing the features that are already provided by U-Boot.