[syslinux] vesamenu requirement

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 03/29/2010 12:01 AM, Giampaolo Bellini wrote:
> Hi Peter
> 
>   thanks a lot for your help... I'll take a look at libpng...
> 

Turns out I'm wrong; floating point is also used in the JPEG library.

This is pretty easy to determine by compiling with -msoft-float.  This
probably means we need *either* a floating-point emulator which hooks
the #NM trap, or compile with -msoft-float and provide the necessary
routines.

I really don't want to go the latter route for the general codebase,
since it would benefit so few systems (I didn't know anyone still built
486SX-class chips!), but it is likely to be the fastest way for you to
get what you want.  Either way you need a set of floating-point
emulation routines.

Another option is to define a new splash screen format which is simpler
to decode than PNG or JPEG and therefore doesn't need floating point; at
that point we could allow FPU-less systems to enter graphics mode and
just not support PNG or JPEG decoding.

In Syslinux 5 it's a bit cleaner to pull in an FPU emulator on needed
systems.

	-hpa