Re: RFC: PowerPC support for laden

[Maurizio Boriani]

On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 03:05, Johan Rydberg wrote:
> Hi,
> Some notes: The PowerPC platform doesn't currently have a 
> bootloader that supports modules (to my knowledge anyway), 
> therefor all modules must be embedded into one single binary
> which is loaded the the bootloader.  This binary, the piggyback,
> must parse the embedded binaries and start them.  
> 
> The build-piggyback script does exactly what the name tells you:
> it builds a finished piggyback binary from the laden binary and
> a set of modules given to the script.

I think sould be a good thing get module_table a bit complex adding it a
string for module name and another one for arg. So module_table will
has: word address for module start, module string name and module arg
string (more close to ia32 multiboot implemented by GRUB).

  .glob module_table
module_table:
  .long module_<name>_start
  .string "<name>\0"
  .string "<arg...>\0"
  ...
  ...
  .data
  .palign 12
module_<name>_start:
  .incbin "/...."
module_<name>_end:
  ...
  ...

Another idea is to generalize this to have a "modulizer" which will be
useful also for dde (serv and its modules to bootstrap) and others.

If you agree I propose myself for "modulizer" implementation (if you
like idea of a generic module maker which could be combined with
autoconf by m4)

> I've started porting wortel+physmem to PowerPC aswell, but 
> they are far from done.

I'd be happy also to see "work in progress" or wait for a first release
(or cowork with you :) )

thanks,
Maurizio 

P.S. now I'm waiting yours comment about my comment :)