[U-Boot] [PATCH v2 3/3] image: Allow images to indicate they're loadable at any address

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Tue, 8 Nov 2011, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> Dear Stephen Warren,
> 
> In message <4EB87375.1040100 at nvidia.com> you wrote:
> >
> > The only place that has full knowledge of the board's memory layout is
> > the U-Boot environment for that board, and hence I assert that the
> > U-Boot environment should define where to load the kernel (and initrd
> > and FDT), and if U-Boot must copy them, where to copy them to. In
> > particular, the creator of the uImage can't possibly pick these values
> > and expect them to work everywhere.
> 
> But as you said yourself, the (raw) kernel is not relocatable.  It
> gets loaded and started at pre-defined (at image build time)
> addresses.  Only the kernel wrapper adds the complexity you are
> complaining about.  Drop it, then.

Many of us insist on preserving that complexity.  From our point of 
view, it is u-Boot which is too complex and should drop its uImage 
complexity.

But instead of asking you to drop u-Boot's complexity, I'm only asking 
for u-Boot to let both methods to coexist and work.

Given that the zImage "complexity" is not going away because we insist 
on keeping it, either we find a middle ground such as Stephen's patches, 
or we advocate for a different bootloader on ARM.

Do you never happend to compromize once in a while?


Nicolas