[U-Boot] BSS footprint of FAT very high - SPL issues

[Aneesh V]

Hi Albert,

On Friday 11 February 2011 12:09 PM, Albert ARIBAUD wrote:
> Hi Aneesh,
>
> Le 11/02/2011 07:28, Aneesh V a écrit :
>> Hello Wolfgang, Albert,
>>
>> On Saturday 05 February 2011 12:28 PM, Albert ARIBAUD wrote:
>>> Hi Aneesh,
>>>
>>> Le 03/02/2011 11:38, Aneesh V a écrit :
>>>
>>>> On second thoughts I would like to keep the entire bss in SDRAM. With
>>>> MMC and FAT support, the SPL is already nearing the IRAM budget in
>>>> OMAP3. It helps to save some space by moving out bss to SDRAM.
>>>>
>>>> If needed, I can fix up the start.S by defining something like
>>>> _end_of_data. But is that really needed. I do not see any SPL that
>>>> needs relocation and SDRAM bss at the same time.
>>>
>>> "Patches Welcome" :) -- with added thanks for patching all start.S /
>>> u-boot.lds in the ARM arch consistently.
>>
>> I see __u_boot_cmd_end as the end of the image to be relocated in all
>> the scripts. Shall I use this label for this purpose. This will work
>> for now and save me from touching all those linker scripts. However,
>> there is a small possibility of this leading to the same problem as
>> with __bss_start in future. I don't think that should be a big concern.
>> Do you agree?
>
> As you point out, using __u_boot_cmd would cause as much of a concern as
> the current use of __bss_start, so I see no improvement there.
>
> Please define a label in the linker file. If you haven't got time to
> port the change to other linkers, don't ; the BSS issue is, for now,
> specific to your case.

I thought it rather unlikely that the position of __u_boot_cmd will
change in future. But I agree with you. Better do it cleanly once and
for all. Changing the linker scripts for all cpus should not be a big
deal. But I will not be able to test any of them except armv7/omap4

One patch will do, right?

Also, any thoughts on the name for the new label.
_end_of_relocated_image is all I can think of?

>
>> Best regards,
>> Aneesh
>
> Amicalement,