On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 10:39:00AM -0700, vb wrote: > While this relocation is seamless for u-boot in its released form, it > becomes a pain each time a module needs to be added (not necessarily > for following release to the Open Source community, for instance used > for inhouse installations which include tens of thousand units for > some companies). If these added modules were not written in position > independent manner (namely, using structures with multiple stage > indirect pointers interleaved with data), the effort to make these > modules work in u-boot is very exhausting.
Note that in U-Boot-v2 we have loadable module support; code can EXPORT_SYMBOL() "public" APIs to other components, which, for example, can be such custom modules. The mechanism was invented for the scenario you describe above. It comes for a cost (footprint), but the overhead is not so big as one might think. You can play around with the feature by building the "sandbox" target, which is a user-mode-u-boot (port of u-boot to Linux userspace). rsc -- Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de Pengutronix - Linux Solutions for Science and Industry Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686 Hannoversche Str. 2, 31134 Hildesheim, Germany Phone: +49-5121-206917-0 | Fax: +49-5121-206917-9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users
