[coreboot] Time for a new project

[Patrick Georgi]

Am Sonntag, den 13.04.2008, 17:06 -0600 schrieb Jordan Crouse:
> I am also concerned about the extra step when we decompress to
> memory and then copy into place.  How can we get around these issues
> and still call the result a true ELF file?
By enforcing the order of headers to be sensible by whatever tool puts
the image into the rom. This could be lar, or probably even a wrapper
around lar and other tools such as an "ELF sanitizer", so we don't have
to stuff all that into lar.

That sanitizer would make sure that:
 1. only necessary sections exist (those that are loaded + notes)
 2. they're in the right order for streaming to succeed
 3. the notes section is as far at the beginning as possible

The streaming elf parser would need the capability to stop after finding
a given section (eg. .notes/name)

This is very likely more expensive than having a non-compressed section
in the file somewhere, but probably not very much. (this could be
benchmarked)

If that wrapper-around-lar (or lar with all that built-in) is the
default interface to build firmware images, it's hard to push an invalid
(as in "too complex ELF") file into rom.

Alternatively, move the name into the lar filesystem:
 payload/0/chooser
 payload/1/tint - the stand-alone tetris clone
 payload/2/GRUB Invaders
 ...

the number is the order in which they are displayed or loaded, depending
on the behaviour of payload/0.


Regards,
Patrick Georgi