Re: EFI and binary distributors

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Tuesday 01 May 2007 22:10, Robert Millan wrote:
> What is the recommended way for binary distributors of GRUB to support
> PC/BIOS and EFI at the same time?  Is it possible to build a mixed binary
> that supports both systems somehow? (and if it isn't, are there plans or
> ongoing work for that?)

I don't think so. The size restriction is too severe for PC BIOS.

One possibility is to bundle binary images both for PC BIOS and EFI in a 
package, and selectively use one of them by grub-install. But this has a 
serious issue, on a EFI platform which supports Legacy Boot, because the user 
can use both.

Personally, I think it is much cleaner to use just EFI on EFI platforms 
instead of Legacy Boot. But this depends on a preference... For now, I have 
no good idea.

> Also, which are the cpu platforms that may use EFI?  From what I could
> find, it seems that:
>
>   - ia32 doesn't have it

You forgot about Intel Mac. :)
In fact, my Mac Mini is with Intel Core Solo, which definitely does not 
support 64-bit.

>   - ia64 always has it
>   - amd64 only has it on Intel-Macs, and will have it on more devices in
>     the future

Do Intel Mac have AMD processors, or do you mean EM64T? If you just mean IA-32 
architecture with 64-bit extensions (both Intel's and AMD's), the canonical 
name in GNU is "x86_64".

> Am I missing something?

No idea. In theory, nothing prevents porting EFI to other architectures. 
Wikipedia mentions XScale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface

Okuji