On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 11:17:41AM -0800, Stephen Warren wrote:

Uwe Kleine-K?nig wrote at Wednesday, February 29, 2012 12:12 PM:

quoted

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:33:58AM -0800, Tim Bird wrote:

quoted

On 02/29/2012 10:14 AM, Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD wrote:

quoted

On 08:58 Wed 29 Feb     , Stephen Warren wrote:

quoted

Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD wrote at Wednesday, February 29, 2012 5:30 AM:

quoted

On 17:03 Tue 28 Feb     , Stephen Warren wrote:

quoted

uImage files typically encode a single absolute load and entry address.
This is inconvenient when attempting to share that uImage across multiple
SoCs with different physical RAM addresses. Recent versions of mkimage
implement a "kernel_noload" image type which encodes no absolute load
address, and a relative entry address. This works well for uImage-wrapped
ARM zImages, since they are relocatable.

This is enabled by commit b9b50e89d317c58becd0e2d7fac2e21e3a81dd0a
"image: Implement IH_TYPE_KERNEL_NOLOAD" in U-Boot.

Signed-off-by: Stephen Warren <redacted>
---
I assume I should put this into the ARM patch tracker if it's OK?

Again a new option for uImage no why not just boot the zImage

in this case the uImage is useless

U-Boot doesn't support zImage at present.

A patch was posted to support it at least for ARM, but needed a little
work before it could be committed.

Sorry I see no advantage to have the uImage build by the kernel anymore as
we have a relocatable zImage

I'll even drop its support

This seems at least premature, and possibly ill-advised in general.
There are lots of U-Boot images out in the field, many of which that
are rarely updated. A lot of workflow will be disrupted unnecessarily
by a change like this.

Could you wait to drop uImage build support in the kernel until
U-Boot supports zImage, and has worked it's way into the field
for a few years?

I admit I didn't check for a few years, but regarding that the values
used to build the uImage from a zImage are (or at least were) quite bad,
I'd say deprecate the uImage target today.

That would prevent anyone from using U-Boot without having to go through
manual steps to duplicate what already exists in the uImage target in
the kernel.

The existing target works just fine today.

It depends what you want to achieve. If you want to make everything
maximally easy for everyone you can optimize the uImage target.

If you want to give incentive for U-Boot to improve, drop the target
today. And note that at least people caring about boot time must not use
the kernel's uImage target anyhow.

Best regards
Uwe

-- 
Pengutronix e.K.                           | Uwe Kleine-K?nig            |
Industrial Linux Solutions                 | http://www.pengutronix.de/  |