[coreboot] SELF/ELF/LAR

Peter Stuge peter at stuge.se
Sun Apr 13 05:44:48 CEST 2008


On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 05:05:29AM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> OTOH, the disadvantages of a new format are many.  You'll have to
> write new tools for dealing with them.  Those tools will have bugs.

Hopefully not so many if the new format is simple. In theory. :p


> The format *itself* will have bugs/shortcomings for quite a while,
> too.

Well, it will stabilize eventually.


> > If coreboot supports loading certain ELF files, it will be
> > surprising to (some) users if it does not support loading
> > all ELF files.
> 
> This can be dealt with in the coreboot build system easily enough:
> just make sure to run the post-processor on all payload files.

Unfortunately that isn't the only way payloads come to coreboot.

lar will eventually be used to replace only the payload in a flash
chip.

lar can already be used to do so in a .rom file.


> The ELF loader in coreboot can easily detect this, too (it can
> check for a coreboot name segment, for example).

Yes.


I actually don't care what internal representation we use for complex
binaries in LARs, as long as the lar utility can deal with common ELF
files, and maybe a few other binary formats too!

I don't want a separate preprocessor. We are reinventing mkelfImage.


//Peter




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