Re: hacking on boot.c to add PE, COFF, LE executables...

[Alex Thiel]

On Tuesday 11 December 2001 14:38, Dark Fiber wrote:
> boot.c is a complete mess geared to only load elf
> files (and hack a.out into some sembelance of an elf file
> wrt text/data/bss).
>
> I want to add LE, PE and COFF to its executable loading,
> but this requires huge changes in boot.c
> (i get TONNES!! of email from ppl about booting homebrew kernels written
> with DJGPP, etc and windows PE files)
>
> What I propose is a kind of driver drop-in,
>
> eg:
>
> struct EXEC_DRV
> {
> int   (*init_drv)(void);
> int   (*uninit_drv)(void);
> void  (*validate_exec)(....);
> void  (*load_image)(....);
> int   (*unload_image)(....);
> };
> (i have not really given the above much thought yet;)
>
> I'd like to abstract as much out as possible from boot.c
> and make it generic, so we can config on build which exec
> drivers to include at compile time etc

I think that's a good idea! When I tried to hack something into boot.c 
recently I found that it is very hard to read. When we have agreed on the 
structure you suppose, or some other, I volunteer to port the multiboot 
kernel part.

Cheers,

        Alex