Re: PPC porting status

[Marco Gerards]

Maurizio Boriani <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi all,
>    I'd like to contribute to grub2 ppc port, so I had a look (and compiled 
> successfully) at sources but haven't figured out which is the actual state 
> of this. So my questions are:
>
> 1) The builded grubof can really bootstrap at least monolitics kernel 
>    (ex. linux) ?

Not yet, but I will work on this in short term.  Does grubof work for you?

> 2) What's the state of multiboot support (I know... for ppc there isn't 
>    a specified multiboot proto, or at least I don't know it's existence)?

We need to write a new multiboot spec, the current one is not portable.

> 3) What's the global state of ppc port? 

- The console needs some improvements:
  Perhaps I fixed this already...

- There are bugs in the partition support:
  I fixed them and I will soon put the changes in CVS

- There is no support to load modules.

- No HFS[+] support:
  Almost finished, see the mailing list archives.

- No loaders at all.
  I have written a linux loader, but it does not support a lot of
  features and it crashes with some kernels.  It is not in CVS yet.

- There are some bugs that can crash grubof.  Perhaps the patches I
  mentioned above will fix this.

> 4) What's need to be done?

Currently I am working on HFS support and the stability of the port.
What I won't do in short term is working on the module loading
support.  It would be really neat if you could work on that.

The other thing you can work on, although I planned working on this
(well, still no problem), is the linux loader.  I could for example
commit what I have after a few improvements.  If you could investigate
the crashes and improve the loader that will mean GRUB 2 can be used
as bootloader.

So feel free to pick a task or suggestion something yourself.  What
will help me the most is the module loading support because I will not
do that in short term.  But whatever you do, please tell us before you
start and keep us informed about the progress.

Can you please describe the hardware you have?  It might help me if I
knew what hardware is supported already, what needs to be done and
what can be tested.

> 5) Where do you suggest me to start from?

Please read about our coding standards.  We use the GCS, please read
the relevant sections from `http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards.html'.

To learn about the things that need to be done, just read the i386/pc
specific code for that.  It already works and it should help when
writing the ppc/ieee1275 code.  And of course you should ask questions
if you have any.

Thanks,
Marco