Re: [RFC] Multiboot2 drafting

["Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko" <phcoder@gmail.com>]

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Andrew Reilly wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I know next to nothing about GRUB, and have not yet read the
> multiboot spec, but I wonder if you could comment on how or
> whether this is related to either the Open Firmware Device Tree
> or the Flattened Device Tree used in various embedded OS ports.
> It would be cool if there were some convergence going on...
>
>   
I've looked into it and found good and bad things.
Good:
-represents the info needed to OS. It's something definitely good and
goes in direction we need
Bad:
-it basically has all the history ballast of OpenFirmware. OFW is
supposed to be system-independent but in fact there is a multitude of
implementation with various degrees of compatibility. Same goes for
device trees. The same information is present in different places with
lots of special cases. Many of fields are actually useless variant selectors
-it uses string identifiers instead of magic numbers. This makes it more
difficult to parse
-the most useful information is coming at the leaves and interpretation
depends on whole path.

It lacks aspects of complete boot protocol. I think it needs some
cleanup. I would be interested in converging simplified and cleaned up
version of device tree into multiboot2
> Cheers,
>
>   


-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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