Re: Grub for ia64

[Marco Gerards]

address@hidden writes:

Hi,

> this is a port of grub2 to ia64.  ia64 systems (itanium) are EFI based so this
> port reuse existing EFI infrastructure.

This is truly great, thanks a lot for doing this! :-)

First of all, the same comment as for your other emails.  Please use
diff -up and inline the patches and write changelog entries.  I like
that you split up the patches so they can be reviewed and separately.

Next week or weeks I will be quite busy and won't have time for GRUB
hacking or to review patches.  But I will try to do so ASAP, or
hopefully Okuji will have the time to do so.  I hope you will be
patient, I want this in ASAP. :)

> fat.diffs: fix 64bits issues and make filename match case insensitive.

Can you please explain why you want this in detail?  I know there are
issues with EFI to determine the prefix.  My guess is that is why you
want to change this.  But I am afraid this might not be a generic
solution so I hope we can discuss the problem first.
>
> [I think most 64 bits issues have already been reported recently and
> independently by the mail grub2 64bit system compatible]

Cool.  I assume these patches are in CVS now?

> modules.diffs:
> currently the ia64 port cannot load modules.  This patch makes slight changes
> so that grub can be completly prelinked without removing the dynamic loading
> feature.
> I think it is worth for three reasons:
> * it makes initial port easier.

Right, we had that with the PPC port too.  I will have a look if it
doesn't break anything for other archs.

I hope you are willing to implement whatever is required for module
loading for IA64.  Module loading is an essential part of the GRUB 2
design and I prefer having the same behavior for every port.  

> * the current common code can't work on ia64 (on ia64 a function pointer is a
> descriptor and not the address of the first function instruction).

Can you give some examples by using code?  Certainly we would have to
aim for module loading at some point in time. :)

> * grub-emu doesn't have dynamic modules and could reuse this work to remove
> most of #ifdef/#endif GRUB_UTIL

*Please* do not mess around too much with grub-emu.  I can perfectly
understand why people want all kind of things changed in grub-emu and
I would certainly like to have module support there (IIRC there were
patches sent in, some of which I still have to review, etc :-/).

It's important to know why I wrote grub-emu.  It is mainly a debugging
tool.  For example you don't want to implement a filesystem or work on
the commandline interface without such tool.  Having module loading
only is just annoying so GRUB_UTIL can't and won't be removed.

Actually, it is technically almost impossible to do modules loading in
every case on every processor.  For example take the PPC, some
relocations are almost impossible or very hard to implement in
userspace.

> I have also written a few additionnal EFI specific commands I will post later.

I am looking forwards to your patches.

Thanks,
Marco