Re: [RFC] Multiboot2 drafting

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <address@hidden>
            Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko <address@hidden> writes:
: Yes and No. multiboot2 describes some aspects of the host system
: hardware but I've never heard of device trees outside of IEEE1275 or
: xnu, where it's probably a historical leftover.

It is far from a historical left-over.  Linux critically depends on
the boot loader on PowerPC to provide it with a tree of devices that
it cannot otherwise probe.  On other architectures, it is becoming an
optional way to specify the device tree as well.  There are many
different implementations of this, since primarily it is just data and
boot loaders are good at providing binary blobs to the kernel...

In addition, Rafal Jawarski has ported this technology to FreeBSD.
He's presenting a paper on it today at BSDcan:
        http://www.bsdcan.org/2010/schedule/events/171.en.html
I've reviewed the work, and it goes a long way towards making some of
the more stupid and repetitive parts of doing a port to a new embedded
architecture easy.

Warner