[coreboot] Time for a new project

[ron minnich]

I have started and deleted several emails on this ELF issue.

I will leave it at this: we've had one problem after another with
ldscripts, ELF creation, ELF parsing, and so on over the years. It is
hard to explain to users that we have to work out a problem and find
out that THIS version of ubuntu has THAT version of gcc which uses
THIS  version of gld which, when used with a particular option in an
ldscript, interacts with a bug in our boot-time ELF parsing code and
causes someone to be not able to boot. "but it's worked for five years
..."

What's different about our world vs. the linux world: if this stuff
happens in the linux world recovery is pretty easy. In our world?
Well, it can be very hard. We require a higher level of certainty, and
that in turn (in my view) means a higher level of simplicity, and
fewer options. And, while ELF seems simple, in practice, it doesn't
seem to work out to be simple. Why? I don't know.

It gets really old to have to deal with this stuff every year, when my
average time to forget all the previous issues is 9 weeks :-)

And it's even more fun when you do trivial things with gld, watch it
dump core, go to the mailing list, and find out the problem has
existed for four years and no one knows how to fix it, even though
they've tried.

So I want our usage of ld to be dead simple, about what the usage is
for /bin/date. I don't want to count on ld to place things at certain
offsets in files. It may work this week, and it will probably fail
next year. The past 8 years of experience says so.

My bss problem on v3 with filo came about when the bss was not
properly place into a loadable segment. I have no remembrance of what
combination of gld, rubber bands, paper clips, and bailing wire caused
that problem. I don't even care any more. I just don't want it to
happen again :-)

So, what can I say? I think everything Segher says is probably right,
he's smarter than I am :-) That said, it's never worked out that well
for me :-)

off to dinner. I am going to watch this discussion from afar, and stay
away from the keyboard from now on :-) I think you guys will pick out
the best options.

Have a good rest of weekend, everyone!

ron