Goals

NOTE: Some of these goals are work-in-progress, others may not be started.

Simple and boring

Install firmware, boot distro. No other steps.

"Normal" BIOS-like experience

On boards with dedicated storage for the firmware, the Tow-Boot build should be independent from, and not care about the installed system media.

Update should be handled out-of-band (through a firmware update option in the firmware, or from distro-independent systems like fwupd). The firmware is not "owned" by the currently running distro. The firmware is not updated or changed through package upgrades.

Having no bootable storage, or all blanked bootable storage should still show a "useful" boot interface. (E.g. explaining what to do and giving some basic information about the board)

Configuration should be handled through menu-based interfaces. Options changed in the menu interface saved to the firmware storage.

Boot modes

Support for generic mainline-based ARM distros as a first class citizen. Whether they boot using UEFI (preferred), or extlinux-compatible boot.

See develop/distro.rst from U-Boot for all the boot modes that aim to be supported.

Pretty and boring

A logo, instructions on how to to get to the firmware interface. That's it.

Serial output should stay as verbose as mainline U-Boot is.

The firmware interface is menu-driven. Though breaking out into hush is supported for more involved needs.

Unsurprising and boring

No needless board-specific or SoC-specific differences in builds.

Boot order is unsurprising: on shared storage, the storage from which the currently running Tow-Boot is running is prioritized by default.

Bootable targets are listed in the menu driven interface.