Re: [PATCH v2 12/14] arm64: image: Remove endianness handling for generating image header

[Will Deacon]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2026 at 05:37:23PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> Since big-endian support for arm64 depends on BROKEN, we don't need to
> bother jumping through hoops to generate a little-endian kernel image
> header for a big-endian target. We can just ignore the possibility
> instead.
> 
> Acked-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Marc Zyngier <maz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/include/asm/assembler.h | 11 -----------
>  arch/arm64/kernel/head.S           |  4 ++--
>  arch/arm64/kernel/image.h          | 24 ++----------------------
>  3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 35 deletions(-)

I think this is another patch I should drop from the series.

I was under the wrong impression that we were using two 32-bit words for
symbol addresses because of endianness quirks in the linker, but digging
into the original rationale from Ard [1], this is more fundamental to
the way in which the PIE toolchain handles ABS64 symbol relocations.

Will

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAKv+Gu8vdk-9N_VVG6XWYLp1SM9ynfcsbxwk2xx1mXYq7qN0Cg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/