Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v1 0/2] Add a generic loader

[Peter Maydell]

On 18 February 2016 at 19:02, Alistair Francis
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Hollis Blanchard
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I understand the part about loading multiple files, but why would I want to
>> load a kernel with this loader, instead of the -kernel option?
>
> If you just want to load a kernel, you should use the -kernel option.
> The advantage with this is when you need multiple images. For example:
>  - Load ATF and let it run
>  - Hands off to a simple loader that sets some registers and drops EL
>  - Start Linux
>
> To be able to perform the steps above all three images and the DTB
> need to already be loaded. This allows us to boot Linux on ATF without
> u-boot. That is just one example, there are others. Mostly it comes
> down to using ATF and something.

FWIW, the ATF stack we have for the 'virt' board uses the semihosting
API to load the later stage blobs. (That's not saying we don't need
this series.)

thanks
-- PMM