Beaglebone - Set pin as output during boot

Is it possible to set gpio pins as outputs using u-boot on a Beaglebone Black? I have seen posts on how to do so on an older beagleboard by editing beagle.h but do not see any change when I do so. I can actually delete beagle.h and it does not impact the compilation process. I have been using the following steps for compiling u-boot:

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} distclean
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} am335x_evm_defconfig
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC}

I understand that gpios default as inputs with pullups and ideally the signals would be active low but can not make a change to the hardware at this point.

Jon