Re: Testing on PowerMac G4

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Friday 04 January 2008 21:37, Robert Millan wrote:
> > A quick look into util/elf/grub-mkimage.c finds "Don't bother preserving
> > the section headers".  I don't even know if the problem is specifically
> > with the section headers or with something else.  Perhaps
> > util/elf/grub-mkimage.c should be rewritten as a linker script, or maybe
> > it should use the BFD library that comes with binutils.  I'm optimistic
> > about the linker script, since all we need is essentially linking.
>
> There's another [1] outstanding problem with elf/grub-mkimage.c:
>
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2007-10/msg00056.html
>
> I think what you propose is a good idea.  It sounds odd that we have to
> reimplement ELF handling when another GNU project already has.  But I don't
> know how the GRUB maintainers think about it.
>
> [1] or, perhaps, it's the same problem?

I object to using a linker, since it is more odd that the user must install 
development tools to just install GRUB.

About BFD, the old discussion was that it made the binary size bloated, thus 
didn't fit into a small disk or initrd or whatever, so it was not convenient 
for installers. I don't know if the same discussion can apply nowadays, since 
most people install operating systems by CD or DVD, memory size is plenty, 
etc. Especially if this is only for OpenFirmware platforms, I don't believe 
that anybody cares.

Okuji