[OpenBIOS] Multiple APIs for ELF file handling

[Blue Swirl]

On 3/20/10, Mark Cave-Ayland <mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>  I've spent some time today looking at the ELF loader code for each
> different architecture, and with a bit of work I believe that I can modify
> arch/sparc64/elfload.c so that it can be used across all architectures.
>
>  Looking closer at the source, it can be seen that are actually two sets of
> ELF routines: one in arch/*/elfload.c, and another set in
> libopenbios/elfload.c which only appears to be used by the PPC code. I've
> already manage to refactor the SPARC64 code so it reuses (and also exposes)
> the same API for use with the PPC code, except with one exception: file
> handles.
>
>  In arch/*/elfload.c, the preferred method for using handles is to make use
> of the included loadfs.c methods which works with an implicit file handle
> (i.e. the file handle isn't passed into any of the functions). In contrast,
> the PPC code directly calls the *_io() API (see find_elf()/elf_readhdrs())
> and so requires an explicit file handle to be passed into each function.
>
>  I'm currently leaning towards the PPC method, since loadfs.c seems to be
> such a lightweight wrapper that it hardly seems worth keeping. Can anyone
> see a reason to keep this before I go and rip it out?

I think ideally the internal APIs should be identical to POSIX ones
(open, lseek, read/write, close). So this would be a step into right
direction.