On Thursday 07 December 2006 23:39, Hollis Blanchard wrote: > I thought we had two options: embedding tags, or ORing bits into an > embedded long. When I suggested embedding tags, you told me it was too > complicated so will cause developer errors. Have I misunderstood?
I meant that the complexity of using bitfields plus a fixed-size structure is identical to that of using tags. But I bet that it is more complicated to use tags _by hand_. For me, "complex" and "complicated" are quite different. Besides how to make it look easier by predefined macros, please consider the spec itself. With bitfields and fixed-size fields, all you must remember is: - What bits mean what - How to order values passed to a boot loader With tags, you need to remember: - What tags mean what - What tag size is expected to each tag - What tags must be combined with a given tag If you generate tags by programming, I don't think the use of tags is more complicated. It can be even easier for a parser. However, when specifying tags by hand, I cannot believe that it is as straightforward as using fields. If you allow me to use a "big gun", I would tell you that most system programmers are used to fields, while they are not familar with writing tags. Okuji _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
