On 12.02.20 09:57, Weijie Gao wrote:
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And more general: why do we need to code this in every loader? I think it would be preferrable to have the loader load the binary data and do the decompression (and entry_point assignment) in a central place so that all loaders can benefit from compression. As it is now, we are duplicating code when implementing LZMA in the next loader.
I agree with Simon, that it would make sense to move this code into a even more generic location, so that other "loaders" can also use this feature. I know, that I suggested to add it here and I think we can make this move into the common SPL interface at a later point, after this patch set has been integrated.
This feature is originally designed for the case that u-boot is stored in a small capacity storage device, mostly NOR flashes, and the space reserved for u-boot is very small. Most loaders (MMC, NAND, SATA, ...) do not need this at all.
Yes and no. As you pointed out, it might be faster to load and decompress a smaller U-Boot proper image than just loading a bigger image. So other platforms might very well take advantage of this feature. And size increase is always a big issue in modern U-Boot. So a smaller image is always welcome. ;)
Thanks, Stefan