====== Bootloader Quality Of Life Improvements ======
  * Student: Connor Bailey (connorbailey777@gmail.com)
  * Mentor:  Warner Losh (imp@)

===== Project description =====

The main goal of this project is to improve overall bootloader quality of life and user experience.

I quantify quality of life/user experience based on the idea that the "ideal" bootloader experience (for a large majority of users) is one where they boot/exit as quickly as possible.

For example, if a cat walks over the keyboard at the wrong time, a plain "OK" prompt is more likely to make someone unfamiliar hit the reset button than type "autoboot".
Like a solid number of quality of life snags, this has an easy fix, but there's many situations like it which all contribute to the greater problem.

===== Approach to solving the problem =====

Lots of hands-on testing and trying to break things.

While the cat example is not very serious, it shows my general thought process. If there's a mistake which is easy to make, it should be easy to fix.

===== Deliverables =====

This list is not concrete, since I am expanding as I find more rough edges, however, the loader prompt changes are the core focus.

Loader prompt:

  * Extending platform-specific key event to terminal escape translation
  * Building out a system to bind keys/terminal escapes to actions at the loader prompt
  * Providing a default set of bindings/actions for "vanilla" editing, such as home/end/left/right/delete
  * Providing an option set of bindings/actions for emacs style editing
  * Implementing actions for history manipulation
  * Implementing actions for command/directory manipulation
  * Better feedback for errors/invalid input

  * Maybe some form of Lua completion

Everything else:

  * Arrow key navigation on splash screen
  * Command to re-enter splash screen from prompt (for accidental key-presses)
  * Hand-holding messages at "easy mistake" points.

===== Milestones =====

The schedule below has been updated to reflect this.

  * Week 1: Development environment setup, both UEFI and legacy BIOS along with investigation into a better way to work on this without rebooting for every change
  * Week 2: Detour through [[https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257018|Bug 257018]]
  * Week 3: Translating UEFI and BIOS key events into terminal escapes passed through the console
  * Week 4: Wire up conf files to assign keys to actions, parsing key/action pairs, potentially figure out a different syntax for mapping keys
  * Week 5: Implement left/right arrow, home/end, delete and such
  * Week 6: Phase 1 deadline
  * Week 7: Implement history keys and commands (investigate using pager for the actual ''%%history%%'' command)
  * Week 8-9: File completion
  * Week 10: Lua completion (only if nothing else needs attention, same for week 11)
  * Week 11: Flashing cursor
  * Week 11 ½: Final deadline

===== Test Plan =====

Generally, the only option is smoke-tests. "does the bootloader work" isn't a very complicated question, so my testing boils down to booting on as many VMs/configurations as possible.

This testing is manual, but I expect I'll get sick of it and end up automating it at some point.

===== The Code =====

https://github.com/CloakerSmoker/freebsd-src/tree/loader-prompt-editing

===== Progress Reports =====

| Week 1/2 | https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/soc-status/2022-June/000008.html |
| Week 3 | https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/soc-status/2022-July/000016.html |

===== Notes =====

Number of times I've forgotten DESTDIR= and accidentally "tested" changes on my host machine: 3.

===== Useful links =====

These are just links I find useful, not background info/related work.

https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_9_2021_03_18.pdf

https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/24593.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20131102003141id_/http://download.intel.com/design/archives/wfm/downloads/pxespec.pdf