[U-Boot] [RFC PATCH 0/7] reboard: Introduce generic relocation feature

[Tom Rini]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
> This is the second patch series aiming to unify the various board.c files
> in each architecture into a single one. This series creates a libboard
> library and implements relocation in it. It then moves ARM over to use
> this framework, as an example.
>
> On ARM the relocation code is duplicated for each CPU yet it
> is the same. We can bring this up to the arch level. But since (I believe)
> Elf relocation is basically the same process for all archs, there is no
> reason not to bring it up to the generic level.
>
> This series establishes a new libboard library in the board/ subdir and
> puts some relocation code in it. Each architecture which uses this
> framework needs to provide a function called arch_elf_relocate_entry()
> which processes a single relocation entry. If there is concern about
> calling a function for all 2000-odd relocations then I can change this.
>
> For ARM, a new arch/arm/lib/proc.S file is created, which holds generic
> ARM assembler code (things that cannot be written in C and are common
> functions used by all ARM CPUs). This helps reduce duplication. Interrupt
> handling code and perhaps even some startup code can move there later.
>
> It may be useful for other architectures to have a similar file.
>
> This series moves ARM over to use this framework. Overall this means that
> two new files are required 'early' in boot: board/reloc.c and
> arch/arm/lib/proc.S.  This is tricky mainly due to SPL. I believe that
> we may need to adjust link scripts to put these two files early in the
> link scripts also. But I am not sure about this and can't actually find
> a problem as yet. I would much prefer to solve this with a new section
> name like .text.early if we can.
>
> (I should really cc all arch maintainers but I think in that case I get
> an error from the list server. Not sure what the limit is.)
>
> Comments please...

Seems like a good idea.  Got some size's before and after?  Maybe some
boot times too (as you mention 2000-odd function calls during
relocation) ?

-- 
Tom