As the “Expo” menu system in U-Boot continues to mature, we are moving beyond simple menu selections and into more complex user interaction. One area needing significant attention is text input—specifically, how we handle multi-line text editing and the underlying video console cursor. In a new 16-patch series, we overhaul the textedit object to support…
Automating cherry-picks with AI (as seen in our introduction to pickman) was a huge step forward for U-Boot Concept maintenance. However, as any maintainer knows, theory and practice often collide when you try to apply 260+ commits in a single session. After several weeks of real-world use, we’ve identified three “stress points” in large-scale cherry-picking:…
Managing cherry-picks across multiple branches is one of the more tedious aspects of maintaining a large project like U-Boot. When you need to backport dozens of commits from an upstream branch while handling merge commits, resolving conflicts, and creating merge requests, the process can consume hours of developer time. Today we’re introducing pickman, a new tool…
U-Boot has two testing worlds that rarely meet. Python tests are flexible and can set up complex scenarios – disk images, network configurations, boot environments. C tests are fast, debuggable, and run directly on hardware. What if we could combine them? The Problem Consider filesystem testing. You need to: The Python test framework handles steps…
Have you ever seen output like this from your test suite? That’s not a buffer overflow or memory corruption. It’s a wierd interaction between linker alignment, compiler optimisations, and pointer arithmetic. Let me tell you how we tracked it down. The Mystery U-Boot uses ‘linker lists’ extensively – a pattern where the linker collects scattered…
The robust operation of any complex software system, especially one as foundational as U-Boot, hinges on the reliability of its core services. Among these, dynamic memory allocation via malloc() is paramount. While often taken for granted, failures in malloc() can be silent saboteurs, leading to unpredictable behaviour, security vulnerabilities, or outright system crashes. Here, we…
Over the last few months (and since the last post) the mouse support in U-Boot Concept has matured quite a bit. The various performance improvements have had a big impact and the UI is now smooth and useable. Here’s a video: So what’s next? Let’s look at a few topics. Touchpads So far touchpads are…
A new patch series has landed in U-Boot concept, adding foundational support for the Tillitis TKey, an open-source USB security token. This series lays the groundwork for integrating hardware-backed security operations directly within the bootloader. The TKey is an interesting piece of hardware. It’s a small, programmable USB device that contains a unique, internal secret…
My first ARM machine was an Archimedes way back in about 1987. I received the first unit sold in New Zealand. At some point my machine started running Acorn’s RISC OS. For me, some of the amazing things about RISC OS were anti-aliased outline fonts, a string-sound generator which worked without a data table and…
I’ve been experimenting with AI coding tools, mostly Claude, for the last few months. Here are some thoughts on my experience so far. Things I have tried So far I have tried using Claude for many different tasks: First, a caveat. I am a beginner at using this technology and do not spend much time…
