u-boot-altera environment?

i've been looking some yesterday for the cyclone v handbook, and when i found it and had a look at it, the one thing im looking for it not mentioned, its the environment variables.

i've been toying some but very limited before with u-boot for the sunxi arch, and they had a config file with the kernel, where you specify kernel args and so on, but the question is,

is all that hardcoded in u-boot-altera or is it supposed to work the same way?

the spl bit of uboot (the preloader) does have a hardcoded link to where to find the 0xA2 partition for the bootloader, that has place for 4 bootloaders (this is coverd int the handbook) but the bootloader where it looks for bootpartition/kernel and naming and so on, that i cant find, i guess its hardcoded..

the end game with this is something like Linux from scratch embedded edition to get a look into embedded linux ( i know i can use uClinux, arch linux arm, ubuntu etc and get a full rootfs but i want to see if i can get it running myself on the HPS on my DE1-SoC..

found this link:

http://xillybus.com/tutorials/u-boot-image-altera-soc

it goes through some of uboots env variables..

update:

if i understood socfpga_cyclone5.h correct its partition 1 is the 0xA2 raw partition with uboot, and partition 2 on the mmc is root + boot partition as linux ext3/4 partition.. so its a one partition layout for linux but a extra raw partition for uboot..