AArch64 kernel image decompression

[Olof Johansson]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 7:52 PM, bhupesh.sharma at freescale.com
<bhupesh.sharma at freescale.com> wrote:

> AFAIK, u-boot requires a u-boot specific header (see [1]) on top of any image it wants to
> boot - whether it's a uncompressed vmlinux or a compressed vmlinux.gz
>
> In the ARM32 code base we had the Makefile rule to generate a uImage automatically (see [2]), with ARM64
> now, I am forced to compress the vmlinux and put a u-boot header on top of it using 'mkimage' and then
> feed the 'uImage' thus generated to the u-boot.
>
> So, it would be good if the ARM64 Makefile can mimic the ARM32 one in this aspect - now that we have
> a working u-boot capable of booting vanilla linux on an ARMv8 foundation model.

No, there should be no uImage target on arm64. Newer u-boots can
already boot an ARM zImage (through the bootz command), and should be
enhanced as needed to boot a vmlinux if needed.

Bringing in uImage as a target on ARM might have been a mistake, since
now people want to bring in new targets for whatever boot format they
happen to want. So it's a good idea to keep arm64 from going down the
same path and stick to the native, raw, formats.


-Olof