Re: x86 setup code rewrite in C

[Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> This patch set replaces the x86 setup code, which is currently all in
> assembly, with a version written in C, using the ".code16gcc" feature
> of binutils (which has been present since at least 2001.)
> 
> The new code is vastly easier to read, and, I hope, debug.  It should
> be noted that I found a fair number of minor bugs while going through
> this code, and have attempted to correct them.
> 
> In the process of doing so, it introduces several cleanups, in
> particular:
> 
> - Obsoletes the hd_info field in the boot_params structure; they are
>   only ever used for ST-506 (pre-IDE) drives and are pretty much
>   guaranteed to be wrong on current BIOSes;
> - Unifies the CPU feature bits between i386 and x86-64.  In the
>   future, it should be possible to use arch/i386/boot/cpucheck.c to do
>   the post-invocation CPU check currently done in
>   arch/x86_64/kernel/trampoline.S, although this patch set doesn't
>   introduce that change.
> - boot_params is now a proper structure.
> 
> This code has been tested in -mm since early in the 2.6.22 cycle.

ACK

I don't claim to be an expert in this area, but I definitely support 
this going in, and I really did read every patch.  :)

The only minor problem I found was a misspelling "paragrap" (perhaps 
plural) in one of the patches.

	Jeff