Hi, Currently, the module dependence is determined in the build process and inserted into the module file, there is several disadvantage about this approach:
1, The build system is quite complicated, here are the steps required to build module hello.mod. a. Compile all pre modules (pre-*.o) b. Extract defined and undefined symbols of pre-*.o and placed them in def-*.lst and und-*.lst. c. From pre-*.lst and und-*.lst, generate module dependence file moddep.lst. d. From moddep.lst, get the module depended by hello, and generate mod-hello.c e. Compile mod-hello.c to mod-hello.o. f. link pre-hello.o and mod-hello.o together to form hello.mod 2, No increment building. >From the above build process, we can see that even to build a single module, we need to compile all other modules, increment building is impossible. 3. Can't implement external modules. All source code must remain in the main tree, external modules can't be implemented, as the build process requires that all modules be built at the same time in order to generate moddep.lst. I suggest using a separate tool to manage the symbol database and module dependence, now the build process can be simplified as: a. Building pre-hello.o, generated mod-hello.c which contains only the module name, and linked as hello.mod b. Use tool grub-symdb to update the symbol database, and modified hello.mod to include module dependence information, it could also change other module file depended on hello.mod. It then generate moddep.lst to be used by grub-mkimage. For example, the command may look like this: grub-symdb -d . add hello.mod The symbol database file modsym.lst is basically the catenation of def-*.lst and und-*.lst, we include it in the target system for external module support. For example, to install external modules: Copy mod file to system grub directory Use grub-symdb to add the new modules to the symbol database and update module dependence. To remove them: Use grub-symdb to remove the modules from symbol database and update module dependence. Remove the mod files. -- Bean _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
