Boot strategies and Boot Image formats in arch/powerpc

[Claus Gindhart]

Hi all,

currently i am trying to migrate our existing PowerPC board supports from the arch/ppc - directory into the new arch/powerpc. I am directly working within a cloned paulus_powerpc git repository on the most recent status.

We (Kontron) want to bring our kernel sources into the appropriate for an open source submission. We are modifying both our proprietary Bootloader, and the Linux Kernel, to make them fit to the new conventions, e.g. the flattened device tree.

However, i dont understand the following:

In the old structure, the kernel provided a bunch of sub directories (simple,openfirmware,...) to create a wrapper around the Linux kernel for brining it into the format, which is appropriate for the boot loader used.
This structure was easily adaptable for custom image formats.

Now, these dirs dont exist any more.

What is the strategy here (i could assume one the 3 variants below ?

a) Is it now in the responsibility of the bootloader, to support one of the image formats, 
    which can be generated here currently ?

b) Will these subdirs (e.g. "simple") come here, but just where not ported yet ?

c) Or, shall such wrapper around the kernel, and/or bringing the kernel into a particular file format
    be performed outside the kernel source, by proprietary tools
    (e.g. like U-boot does it with the mkimage tool) ?

-- 
Mit freundlichen Gruessen / Best regards

Claus Gindhart
SW R&D
Kontron Modular Computers
phone :++49 (0)8341-803-374
mailto:claus.gindhart at kontron-modular.com
http://www.kontron.com

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