Hi Alex, On 14 June 2018 at 13:51, Alexander Graf <ag...@suse.de> wrote: > > > On 14.06.18 21:01, Simon Glass wrote: >> On 14 June 2018 at 12:22, Alexander Graf <ag...@suse.de> wrote: >>> The fs_read() function wants to get an address rather than the >>> pointer to a buffer. >>> >>> So let's convert the passed buffer from pointer back a the address >>> to make efi_loader on sandbox happier. >>> >>> Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf <ag...@suse.de> >>> >>> --- >>> >>> v1 -> v2: >>> >>> - Clarify address vs pointer >>> - include mapmem.h >>> --- >>> lib/efi_loader/efi_file.c | 5 ++++- >>> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) >> >> Reviewed-by: Simon Glass <s...@chromium.org> >> > > I actually think that this patch tackles the problem the wrong way > around. I've cooked up another one that converts fs_read() and > fs_write() to instead take a pointer - which really is what most users > of the API want in the first place: > > > https://github.com/agraf/u-boot/commit/eb89f036a42cea8d7aaa6d83b8ecd9d202814b0f
Actually this is a pretty good exposition of why we don't want to use pointers everywhere. U-Boot uses addresses all over the place. Even a search for something as specific as "ulong addr" gets over 200 matches. If we go down this path we will end up changing a pretty fundamental part of U-Boot, and I don't think it is a good idea to do that. Addresses are easy to understand, can be added/subtracted without pointer arithmetic, can be easily converted to pointers as needed, can be 32-bits long on sandbox, etc. So I think we should step back from the abyss here and stick with the way sandbox currently deals with addresses. It works well, is pretty easy to understand, allows debugging which is just as easy on sandbox as other archs (since they both uses addresses until basically the final access), the addresses are typically small values that start at 0 which much is easier to read than (e.g.) 00007f1b58c8b008. Here for example is the output from starting U-Boot with debugging in board_f.c (something I have turned on a lot when refactoring and debugging the init sequence): U-Boot 2018.07-rc1-00142-g134ea86c7f-dirty (Jun 14 2018 - 15:04:04 -0600) DRAM: Monitor len: 00395AB0 Ram size: 08000000 Ram top: 08000000 Reserving 3670k for U-Boot at: 07c6a000 Reserving 32776k for malloc() at: 05c68000 Reserving 120 Bytes for Board Info at: 05c67f88 Reserving 472 Bytes for Global Data at: 05c67db0 Reserving 4352 Bytes for FDT at: 05c66cb0 Reserving 0x3c8 Bytes for bootstage at: 05c668e8 RAM Configuration: Bank #0: 0 128 MiB DRAM: 128 MiB New Stack Pointer is: 05c668d0 Copying bootstage from 00007fdb0056e038 to 00007fdb061c48f0, size 3c8 Relocation Offset is: 07c6a000 Relocating to 07c6a000, new gd at 05c67db0, sp at 05c668d0 If we use pointers we get things like this: Reserving 3670k for U-Boot at: 00007f1b58c8b008 I just don't want to deal with 64-bit addresses when debugging things, and there really is no point. The map_sysmem() function provides a nice and easy way to cast an address to a pointer, and it works on all architectures. Regards, Simon _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de https://lists.denx.de/listinfo/u-boot
