Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:01:19 -0800 From: Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com> To: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> Cc: Kip Macy <kip.macy@gmail.com>, src-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-src@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/dev/cxgb bin2h.pl cxgb_main.c cxgb_t3fw.c cxgb_t3fw.h t3fw-5.0.0.bin.gz.uu src/sys/modules/cxgb Makefile src/sys/modules/cxgb/cxgb Makefile src/sys/modules/cxgb/cxgb_t3fw Makefile src/sys/conf NOTES files Message-ID: <47C5894F.10301@errno.com> In-Reply-To: <20080227090113.A48182@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> References: <200802260302.m1Q32KOT081487@repoman.freebsd.org> <200802261133.00942.jhb@freebsd.org> <b1fa29170802261507v5b336f36mcdab9bae65869e0a@mail.gmail.com> <b1fa29170802261519y7940b16em7c26e3175831ff14@mail.gmail.com> <47C4A083.2050602@errno.com> <20080227090113.A48182@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu>
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Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> Sam Leffler [sam@errno.com] wrote:
>
>> Huh? What does "static linking" mean? If you're looking for an example
>> of a firmware image being embedded in a kernel look at the npe firmware
>> used by xscale.
>>
>
> Kip,
>
> Before spending time on this, be warned that I tried this for mxge
> last year, and I gave up because it was such a headache. The final
> straw was that building the firmware into a .fwo file via a files file
> rule doesn't work on platforms like ia64 due some toolchain problems.
> Specifically, there was no way to get the constant-gp flag set on an
> ld -b binary image, which caused the final kernel link command to
> explode.
>
> Rather than use the .fwo method, I committed some .c shims (see
> dev/mxge/mxge_eth_z8e.c) which just #include my firmware header files.
> This avoids the linking problems, and turns out to be much, much
> easier to work with than the fw_stub files file method.
>
My recollection from working with you on this was that the issue was
ia64, not that it was hard. Given working examples to cut&paste I find
this argument weak. As to ia64, if it doesn't support our build
mechanisms then it should not be part of make universe.
When Kip and I talked about why he did stuff w/o using fw_stub.awk it
turned out he wasn't aware of existing examples. This technique is
documented in firmware(9) and has worked fine for me (but of course I
came up with it).
The bottom line however is that I don't particularly care how firmware
images get built so long as drivers use firmware(9) to load them. I've
dealt with firmware loading on a variety of non-freebsd systems and
always miss it.
Sam
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