Re: Embedded MIPS/Linux Needs

[Joe deBlaquiere <jadb@redhat.com>]

Florian Lohoff wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 25, 2001 at 09:01:52PM -0600, Joe deBlaquiere wrote:
> 
>> Just some unsorted random ideas:
>> 
>> 1. Would it be possible to lump some of the different MIPS variants
>> together more closely? In my dream world I could build one kernel that
>> would boot on every mips architecture. This way the work can be more
>> general. As it stands now, if you want Tx39 or Vr41 variants you're
>> working out of a different tree. With the number of SoC core products
>> coming out at present, this predicament is only likely to get more
>> serious. I know at one point in time you could boot a single ARM kernel on
>> several different systems and it would adapt it's processor specifics at
>> runtime. Such a design might help to bring the MIPS world together a bit.
> 
> 
> There is at least a problem with endianess - I dont think there can be
> a little and big endian kernel coexist in the same object or at least
> not with major rework.
> 

Well, yes that would be a problem, but at least within endianess, there's no reason why the processor specific stuff can't be abstracted and attached at runtime.

> Why would you suggest having vr41 and TX39 in a seperat tree ? I had a
> look in the linux-vr tree and i dont like some of their #ifdef spaghetti
> stuff so i am currently working on TX39 stuff on top of the oss tree
> which could be made cleanly. (Dont integrate all TX39 archs into one
> subarch *grrr*)
> 

It's kinda ugly, but some of that is that the original architecture didn't scale to having many different target platforms. I think a little sane multi-platform infrastructure would make things cleaner and better in the future.

> Flo


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Joe deBlaquiere
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