[flashrom] Re: Questions regarding Easy project and GSoC

[Aarya Chaumal]

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for your quick reply on the "fixing endianness issues" project. I
saw that in the code that functions flashrom_layout_read_from_* only work
for little-endian machines and return an error code otherwise. Also, the
function flashrom_layout_parse_fmap is defined for little-endian machines.
So maybe we can have a function to convert the data into the endianness of
the machine before parsing/reading it. Macros are defined for up to 64bit
endianness conversion in hwaccess.h but they are not used anywhere. Doing
this much should make the code run on both types of machines. This logic
might also work in other parts of the code which are endian specific
(currently not sure which parts are these)

Furthermore, I think we should give the user the specify in which endian he
wants to write/read the data.

Aarya.

On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 2:54 AM Thomas Heijligen  wrote:
> Hi Aarya,
>
> Thank you for contributing to flashrom. The merge of a patch sometimes
> needs just time, even if it has +2.
>
> The topic "fixing endianness issues" consists of tasks to rewrite code
> that assumes a specific endianness. For example, the flashrom fmap
> parser just maps packed c structs onto the memory. This works only when
> flashrom runs on a CPU with the same endian as fmap defines. We have
> two macros, __FLASHROM_LITTLE_ENDIAN__ and __FLASHROM_BIG_ENDIAN__
> which handle code that works only on one endian. In the GSoC project,
> we want to make this code run on little and big endian systems. Besides
> that, we may find additional parts in the code which are endian
> specific.
>
> -- Thomas
>
> On Sun, 2022-03-13 at 08:13 +0530, Aarya Chaumal wrote:
> > As suggested, I have been doing some of the easy projects till now
> > and
> > I have enjoyed it. I have submitted a few patches till now and some
> > of
> > them have gotten +2 code-reviews but still, they were not merged. Is
> > there anything that is required to get the changes to be merged?
> > Also, I have fixed most of the issues I got by running scan-build,
> > only 2 classes of issues were remaining which I feel are false
> > positives (showing underflow error but those cases won't occur or are
> > handled seprately) created by the tool and can be ignored.
> > As was going through your proposed projects for GSoC, I found
> > "optimizing erase-function" and "fixing endianness issues"
> > interesting and would like to do that in the summer. Can you suggest
> > some tasks so that I can know more about these projects and get an
> > idea of how to write my proposal for GSoC for doing this project?
> > Thanks :)
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 10, 2022 at 10:45 AM Anastasia Klimchuk
> >  wrote:
> > > Hello Aarya,
> > >
> > > Nice to meet you! I think I saw your question on the IRC channel,
> > > and someone replied, was that your question?
> > > Do you still need more info? Let us know if yes.
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > >
> > > On Wed, Mar 9, 2022 at 2:42 PM Aarya Chaumal
> > >  wrote:
> > > > Hello there,
> > > >
> > > > I hope you are well today when you receive this email. I am Aarya
> > > > Chaumal, a Computer Engineering student at the College of
> > > > Engineering Pune, India. While going through organizations for
> > > > this year's Google's Summer of Code I came across your
> > > > organization, Flashrom.
> > > >
> > > > I am a  part of onboard computers subsystem at my college's
> > > > satellite initiative. Through this, I have closely worked on
> > > > Atmel SAM E70 XPLAINED board. Also, I have strong knowledge about
> > > > C/C++ and assembly language. From your list of GSoC project
> > > > ideas, I liked the idea of “Remove global state from flashrom”
> > > > and "Optimize Erase-Function Selection", although I am not quite
> > > > sure which one is more suitable for me. Can you guide me through
> > > > this?
> > > >
> > > > As mentioned in your Contributor commitments and requirements, I
> > > > started to do one of the easy projects - Add new flash chip
> > > > definitions. For this, I read the relevant datasheets, one from
> > > > the unlisted chips and another of a listed one (for reference)
> > > > but still, I am not getting the information about some fields for
> > > > the structure in the datasheet, namely the feature_bits,
> > > > probe_timing. Also, do I have to write the probe, read, write and
> > > > erase functions for the chip separately? Also, how do I test if
> > > > my code is working as I don't have relevant hardware with me? Can
> > > > you help me with this? Also what resources should I use to learn
> > > > more about it?
> > > >
> > > > Thank you for looking into this for me.
> > > > Sincerely,
> > > > Aarya Chaumal
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