From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Russell King - ARM Linux Subject: Re: [RFC] Kbuild support for ARM FIT images Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:44:26 +0000 Message-ID: <20130318164426.GI30923@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk> References: <20130222160044.GA16357@quad.lixom.net> <20130318163648.GA3722@amd.pavel.ucw.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20130318163648.GA3722@amd.pavel.ucw.cz> Sender: linux-kbuild-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Pavel Machek Cc: Olof Johansson , "Fernandes, Joel A" , Grant Likely , linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org, tony@atomide.com, Grant Likely , u-boot@lists.denx.de, Joel A Fernandes , "Rini, Tom" , Linux OMAP List , Linux ARM Kernel List List-Id: linux-omap@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 05:36:53PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote: > On Fri 2013-02-22 08:00:44, Olof Johansson wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 07:37:10PM -0600, Joel A Fernandes wrote: > > > Any comments on this approach? Is it better to merge mkfitsrc.sh with > > > mkuboot.sh? > > > > I know this was discussed quite extensively yesterday, but here is my take on > > it: > > > > Given the recent complications from multiplatform, we really saw a strong > > reason to _not_ do the final boot wrapping in the kernel build system. > > Produce the zImage and the DTB files, and have a surrounding script that > > bundles the two in a format that your particular device needs. > > > > Most distros have scripts to handle the "make install" step of a kernel build. > > That's where this belongs, not in the actual build step. > > Not sure I agree here: > > 1) zImage was designed to boot from floppy, without any kind of > bootloader on i386 zImage on x86 != zImage on ARM. They only share the fact that they're both compressed and self-extracting. ARM has never supported any kind of floppy based boot - mainly because floppies have never been "executable" like they are on x86; all that previous boot loaders ever did was load the kernel into RAM using some method and call address 0, with a data structure (formerly struct params, later atags) at a fixed address, later passing that address to the kernel. The best floppies got was being able to run a script or load an executable off the floppy under the ROM'd OS, and our zImage itself doesn't fit the format required for that. Our zImage has always been just a pure straight binary compressed kernel format. Nothing more.