Dear Stephen,
In message 51475997.2060008@wwwdotorg.org you wrote:
Raw zImage /is/ the useful format that should be adopted.
This "one size fits all" approch does fit everywhere. There are a number of users (including _big_ commercial ones, with _large_ numebrs of systems in the field) that have simple requirements like:
- how can I find out if the image I just loaded to RAM in OK (OK maning some checksum is correct, or some crypto-key could be verified, or ...) ?
- how can I find out which version of image is installed on this device in the flash? Can I print something like an ID string, or a build timestamp, etc?
etc. etc.
zImage may work well in many cases, but there are also many cases where in image format that allows for additional meta-data is mandatory.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk