Nico Huber has posted comments on this change. ( https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/33380 )
Change subject: Console: Allow console UART to be enabled without serial console ......................................................................
Patch Set 1:
Patch Set 1:
What is UAER
Sorry UART.
What is there to set up?
The UART hardware.
Usually there is nothing to set up (beyond the chip confi- guration which is not done here in drivers/uart/). Can you elaborate, please.
So far, all my serial ports worked fine without CONSOLE_ SERIAL. I'm trying to figure out what makes your case so special. And it seems Julius already gave the right hint, you are reusing our console driver infrastructure to fill an ACPI table. That's ok, I guess. But if it's really just that, your commit message and help texts need an update, because currently it makes it look like you are talking about hardware.
Why should coreboot do it?
Because coreboot sets up the hardware.
This also goes along with the following patches to set up the SPCR ACPI table.
This has `console` in its name, why is it useful without console?
The coreboot console is not the only thing the serial port can be used for. It's not the only console. Enabling the coreboot console slows down the boot process considerably, so in my opinion, it's entirely reasonable to leave the coreboot serial console disabled, but still want to have the serial port set up.
What I'm trying to tell you all along, the drivers here are *not* for "serial port set up" they are for using the serial port usage.
I don't understand the argument. If you or anyone else doesn't want to use this feature, don't enable it. Sure, there's still some work to do on the patch, but your arguments make it seem like you're about to give it a -2, and I don't understand the objection.
As the reason for this change is still unclear to me, I have no idea what to do. My main concern is that when people are already confused during review of a new Kconfig option, there will be much more confusion once it is merged.