Re: RISC OS port

[Marco Gerards <metgerards@student.han.nl>]

Timothy Baldwin <tim.lists@majoroak.f2s.com> writes:

> During the past few months I have been working on a port to RISC OS an ARM 
> processors. It has reached the point where it can boot Linux, and IMO is 
> nearly ready to be included in CVS. It does not support to booting of 
> compressed Linux kernels as the decompression code has not been updated to 
> the new parameter passing convention.

That is really nice!  Can you get the GRUB menu to work, etc?

How about module loading?  I noticed you wrote some code for that
too...

I noticed you used a lot of assembler.  Isn't it possible to minimize
the use of assembler somehow?  If that is not possible, no problem.

> It includes support to access filesystems though the RISC OS filesystem API, 
> which error numbers should be returned in case of an error?

I remember a discussion about this...  I noticed you implemented some
disk access code.  Is it possible to access GNU/Linux partitions?

Is it possible to write support for the filesystem used on RISC OS?  I
can help you with that, if you want that.

> The other ends which need tidying up before inclusion in CVS are:
> Write a changelog
> Fix copyright notices
> Write support for ARMv4 (eg. StrongARM) and ARMv5 processors (eg. XScale).
> Fix the arrow keys

Nice.  Can you please split up the patch somehow?  And please make
sure you follow the GCS.  That is an important requirement for patches
for GRUB.  If you can do that, it will be easier for me to proof read
the patch(es) before it can be applied.

> What codes should the arrow keys return? The openfirmware and PC drivers 
> disagree.

Perhaps it will be easier if there is one file that defines the
available keys.  Now it is arch dependent.  Anyway, I remember there
is some room for improvement...

>
> TODO list:
> Support access to RISC OS files not on (or symlinked from) devices supported 
> by Grub.

Don't worry about cross filesystem symlinks.

> Possibly support attaching modules to the kernel.

Attaching modules to the kernel?

Thanks,
Marco