Re: [MiNT] Coldfire patches

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On sunnuntai 31 heinäkuu 2011, Peter Slegg wrote:
> This idea might be totally unworkable but it just occurred
> to me so I thought I would share. It might be a non-issue.
> 
> Self-extracting archives used to be used to squeeze apps onto a floppy.
> Could a similar idea be used to create self-patching apps that run
> on 680x0 and Coldfire ?

Sounds cool and it could also do quick uncompression.  Disk speeds
are still slower than CPU/RAM speeds and some compression/decompression
algorithms like LZO are close to memcpy speed. :-)


> I am mostly thinking about those op codes that can't be trapped.
> The app would be wrapped in the patcher that knows which bits to
> patch for Coldfire.
>
> When the app is launched, the wrapper checks the cpu and if it is
> Coldfire, patches the app before running. For 680x0 it just runs.

Is there anything needing patching which m68k & CF variants have different
sizes (e.g. require different number of instructions)?  That would mess
up offsets...

 
> This might make it easier to distribute one app for both m68 and
> Coldfire.


	- Eero