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

Marek Vasut marek.vasut at gmail.com
Mon Oct 31 19:36:20 CET 2011


> The legacy uImage format includes an absolute load and entry-
> point address. When presented with a uImage in memory that
> isn't loaded at the address in the image's load address,
> U-Boot will relocate the image to its address in the header.
> 
> Some payloads can actually be loaded and used at any arbitrary
> address. An example is an ARM Linux kernel zImage file. This
> is useful when sharing a single zImage across multiple boards
> with different memory layouts, or U-Boot builds with different
> ${load_addr} since sharing a single absolute load address may
> not be possible.
> 
> With this config option enabled, an image header may contain a
> load address of -1/0xffffffff. This indicates the image can
> operate at any load address, and U-Boot will avoid automtically
> copying it anywhere. In this case, the entry-point field is
> specified relative to the start of the image payload.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stephen Warren <swarren at nvidia.com>
> ---
> Wolfgang,
> 
> This is an much simpler and less invasive alternative to my previous
> IH_TYPE_KERNEL_REL patch. If it's OK, you can ignore that patch.
> 
> u-boot.bin sizes for Tegra Seaboard without/with this config option on:
> 
>    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
>  165858	   3565	 217016	 386439	  5e587	./u-boot
> 
> with:
> 
>    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
>  165950	   3565	 217012	 386527	  5e5df	./u-boot
> 

[...]

This one doesn't apply on top of current u-boot master


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