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Terminology: upload vs download
Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:07 am
by aivarannamaa
Hi!
Do you "upload" or "download" a firmware to a device? I've seen both usages. What about copying files to and from the device's file system? Are there better terms for these operations?
best regards,
Aivar
Re: Terminology: upload vs download
Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:10 pm
by dhylands
I generally say flashing which means programming the flash memory on the device. The micropython makefile uses the terminology "deploy".
Upload/download is relative to the host or the device so either can be used depending on the context.
Re: Terminology: upload vs download
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:00 am
by pythoncoder
I think upload/download belong to an era of fairly dumb devices connecting to mainframes. These days the terms are too ambiguous to mean much. Git uses push and pull (push from and pull to the device you're using), terms which make sense. If I ssh into a Raspberry Pi from a Core i7 machine and pull a file from the box to the Pi is it up or down? Who knows. Or cares
Re: Terminology: upload vs download
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:40 am
by chrismas9
The most consistent use is on the Internet where upload and download are with respect to yourself. You always download a movie (to yourself) and upload a web page (from yourself) to a web server.
So you would download a log file from a pyboard and upload a new main.py to it.
Re: Terminology: upload vs download
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:42 pm
by dhylands
Except dfu-util decided to use the terminology from the device's perspective. So you download new firmware to the board and upload firmware to the host if you want to read the firmware from the device. Excerpt from dfu-util --help:
Code: Select all
-U --upload <file> Read firmware from device into <file>
-Z --upload-size <bytes> Specify the expected upload size in bytes
-D --download <file> Write firmware from <file> into device