[U-Boot] ARM relocation, question to Heiko

Heiko Schocher hs at denx.de
Sat Oct 2 11:08:23 CEST 2010


Hello Reinhard,

Reinhard Meyer wrote:
> Dear Albert ARIBAUD,
>>> I try to understand how the relocation process could handle pointers (to
>>> functions or other data) in const or data sections.
>>> Your code cannot know what is data and what is a pointer that needs
>>> adjustment?
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>> Reinhard
>> Hi Reinhart,
>>
>> Short answer - the relocation process does not handle pointers inside
>> data structures.
>>
>> And yes, this means the content arrays of pointers such as init_sequence
>> is not relocated. Been there, done that, can give you one of the

The init_sequence should not called anymore after relocation, as it is
the init_sequence ... or?

>> tee-shirts I got :)
>>
>> ATM I have not found a way to fix this, except making the code which
>> uses the pointers aware that the are location-sensitive and fix them
>> when using them.
> 
> That means that things like this cannot work (with relocation),
> unless adding the relocation offset before using the pointer:

Yep, you have to fix these pointers after relocation ...

> const struct {
> 	const u8 shift;
> 	const u8 idcode;
> 	struct spi_flash *(*probe) (struct spi_slave *spi, u8 *idcode);
> } flashes[] = {
> #ifdef CONFIG_SPI_FLASH_SPANSION
> 	{ 0, 0x01, spi_flash_probe_spansion, },
> #endif
[...]
> #ifdef CONFIG_SPI_FRAM_RAMTRON
> 	{ 6, 0xc2, spi_fram_probe_ramtron, },
> # ifdef CONFIG_SPI_FRAM_RAMTRON_NON_JEDEC
> 	{ 0, 0xff, spi_fram_probe_ramtron, },
> # endif
> # undef IDBUF_LEN
> # define IDBUF_LEN 9 /* we need to read 6+3 bytes */
> #endif
> };
> 
> And I think there are more places of this type in u-boot...

Yes, maybe. But relocation as I did for arm, also works
on m68k, sparc, mips, avr32 and they must do also this
fixups, so for common functions (except the new env handling,
which I think got never tested on this architectures?) should
work ...

As I just searching in code: there is a env_relocate()
function (which get called from arch/arm/lib/board.c board_init_r()),
but it did not the necessary work for subcommandtable fixup...
I think this should be the right place to do this ... or?

bye,
Heiko
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