Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:56:26 +0000
From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>
To: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/7] inflate pt1: refactor boot-time inflate code
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On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 02:12:15PM -0600, Matt Mackall wrote:
> This is a refactored version of the lib/inflate.c:
> 
> - clean up some really ugly code
> - clean up atrocities like '#include "../../../lib/inflate.c"'
> - drop a ton of cut and paste code from the kernel boot
> - move towards making the boot decompressor pluggable
> - move towards unifying the multiple inflate implementations
> - save space
> 
> I'm sending this out in three batches. This first batch is core
> clean-ups without arch-specific changes.
> 
> (This work was sponsored in part by the CE Linux Forum.)

ISTR something like this was posted months back, but I don't remember
what the status of it was.  Hence, I might be repeating myself in this
reply, but I feel it's better to mention this than not to.

There's a comment at the top of arch/arm/boot/compressed/misc.c which
describes the use of the inflate code on ARM - for the kernel it's a
special case where the decompressor is run from ROM.

There's also another twist to it though - our relocatable zImage
requires us to build all files in the executable part of zImage
without _any_ static variables.  If there's one or more static
variables, this feature breaks horribly (and silently in the non-
relocated cases.)

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core
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