Re: pending patches

[tgingold]

Quoting "Yoshinori K. Okuji" <address@hidden>:

> Hello,
>
> So, if you know any patches I should take a look, please remind me. What I
> can
> recall are:
>
> - IA-64 port. I think I can find it myself.

I plan to work again on the ia64 port soon.

There are three different parts/issues:

* ia64 specific files: no real issues, the copyright assignment process is
  completed.

* build issue: the old patch uses objdump+tricks to convert from ELF to PE/COFF
 (EFI object format).  A small part of the trick is based on an HP start.S which
 is not assigned to FSF.
  During work on EFI, I have written a standalone ELF to PE/COFF converted.  I
  still have to mark it work within the grub framework.  Not a lot of work but
  it requires a few hours.

* modules: Dynamically loading modules requires handling relocation, which is
  a nightmare on ia64.  On the other side, because it's ia64 and EFI this
  feature is certainly not a must have (this should be discussed more lengthly).
  This is currently working by prelinking required modules.
  I think the pre-link method is a good idea (it simplifies porting work),
  is not target dependent but patches common files.

This is the current status.
I am very interested in having an ia64 port of grub (almost required for Xen).
Tristan.