[coreboot] ELF

[Myles Watson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: coreboot-bounces+mylesgw=gmail.com at coreboot.org [mailto:coreboot-
> bounces+mylesgw=gmail.com at coreboot.org] On Behalf Of Peter Stuge
> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 4:46 PM
> To: coreboot at coreboot.org
> Subject: Re: [coreboot] ELF
> 
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 12:09:07AM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> > So my base is *not* "ELF is best", but it is "ELF is just fine for
> > this, so why would we need another format, with all infrastructure
> > overhead that requires?".  So please start by explaining what is
> > bad, or even just sub-optimal, in using ELF here.
> 
> This is my take;
> 
> The problem in the past has been that ELFs have gone into flash
> (.rom) with structures that failed at run time in part because of
> the coreboot ELF loader and in part because of the somewhat
> constrained environment.
> 
> All files going into a .rom will go through lar, so I want lar to do
> any and all processing that is neccessary. It does not have to be
> internal code, it can be a library, or even an external helper, but
> my major concern is not needing to run any extra commands.
> 
> I expect to be able to put vmlinux straight into flash (.rom file)
> using lar. I specifically do not want a separate ELF chewer. That was
> mkelfImage. I don't hate mkelfImage in any way but I want to avoid
> that extra step in lar.
> 
> I also expect to be able to extract said vmlinux from one flash (.rom
> file), store it on disk (but not use it) and later write it into
> another flash (.rom file).

Do you need the intermediate storage step?  Is there an advantage over
copying from one .rom file to another?

Myles