From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:55441 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751205AbXGJF0O (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:26:14 -0400 Message-ID: <46931840.1050002@garzik.org> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:25:20 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: x86 setup code rewrite in C References: <11840359321823-git-send-email-hpa@zytor.com> In-Reply-To: <11840359321823-git-send-email-hpa@zytor.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-arch-owner@vger.kernel.org To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, andi@firstfloor.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org List-ID: 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