[coreboot] SPD binaries in coreboot

[ron minnich]

Build the tool in go. It's trivial. If you have an idea how it ought to
work I can set it up in the playground in a few minutes.

ron

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 8:24 AM Patrick Georgi <pgeorgi at google.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Some mainboards come with soldered-on memory without SPD ROM. For
> these, we carry the SPD data in coreboot.
>
> Currently, they're stored in a hexdump format that is then converted
> to binary at build time. The various mechanisms of doing so fail on
> some platform or another:
>  - "echo -e -n $stuff" isn't well-liked by some shells (emits "e -n
> $stuff")
>  - "printf '\x42'" isn't well-liked by some shells (or /usr/bin/printf
> tools) that don't support hexadecimal formats
>  - "printf '\0377'" isn't well-liked by some non-conforming, but existing
> shells
>  - xxd -rg1 $file > $file.bin requires xxd, which comes with vim and
> may just not exist
>
> I see essentially two ways out of this, before we can start reducing
> duplication across the tree in that area:
> We could build our own tool to parse hex files and dump binary, or we
> could ship SPD data as binary from the start (and only have to
> concatenate them).
>
> The second option has the appeal of being much simpler (and there
> isn't really a "preferred form" for editing SPD data that I'm aware of
> - is there?), but looks icky at a glance because it's binary (but it's
> really just as impenetrable as the equivalent hexdump).
>
> So what do these files contain? Parameters (as in: facts) about the
> hardware's size, layout, and timing, and a bunch of vendor/model
> identifier strings.
>
>
> So, is there a third option that I'm missing? Other opinions?
> Patrick
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