Bootloader

[Andy Green]

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Somebody in the thread at some point said:
> Andy Green wrote:
>> <= 2MB is fine as initramfs for me but aren't we closing off the
>> possibility for a wonderland of graphical apps and so on in there?  Or
>> these must come from the main rootfs?
> 
> A "console" type system would probably even fit into 1MB of initramfs,
> with a bit of squeezing. (kboot's initramfs currently takes about
> 400kB, but we may want to have a bit more stuff, perhaps use glibc,
> and the kboot shell should really be rewritten in C.)
> 
> So there's still about 1MB for fancy GUIs.
> 
> And of course, those spare 4MB I'd allocate could be used for even
> more graphical bloat :)

I wonder if we need to get away from this enforced minimalism there, it
is sort of U-Boot thinking.

Why don't we treat the alternate kernel and rootfs as made up of pieces
from the normal packages (and libc / libs!), so we can re-use anything
interesting (eg, wpa_supplicant) without a second thought.  And if this
struggle to keep the initramfs down cramps the style, use a proper
rootfs part.

That will also further regularize how you work with this alternative
kernel + rootfs -- just copy files in the filesystem on the device, not
regenerate magic initramfs images on a host.

- -Andy
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