July 20: More comments today. Got some feedback from Stefan about the quotes patch. Also added the automated test to the same patch. Decided to have a look at the sizes before and after the quoting (make bin/rtl8139.dsk.sizes): Before

 text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
  629	      8	      0	    637	    27d	bin/exec.o
  321	     16	      4	    341	    155	bin/shell.o

After:

 text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
  629	      8	      0	    637	    27d	bin/exec.o
  335	     16	      4	    355	    163	bin/shell.o
  954	      0	      0	    954	    3ba	bin/parse.o

and for bin/rtl8139.rom: Before: 55808, After: 55808

July 21-24: Had some problems with the gen_stack: the expand_command() function made a new stack, stored the arguments in that and copied the contents into the passed stack. So, I've now defined gen_stack as a struct:

struct gen_stack {
      void *ptr;
      int count;
};
#define VAR_STACK( name ) _##name
#define INIT_STACK( name ) { VAR_STACK ( name ), -1 }
#define STACK( name, type, size ) \
      typeof ( type ) VAR_STACK ( name )[size]; \
      struct gen_stack name = INIT_STACK ( name );

So, when a stack is defined:

STACK ( my_stack, int, 10);

becomes:

typeof ( int ) _my_stack[10];
struct gen_stack my_stack = { _my_stack, -1 };;

This means that a gen_stack can be passed as a single entity to functions. Also, am using a struct string to store the complete command. This allows me to reduce the size of the system() function slightly.

 577	      8	      4	    589	    24d	bin/exec.o
 335	     16	      4	    355	    163	bin/shell.o
 954	      0	      0	    954	    3ba	bin/parse.o

Sent in the modifications to etherboot-developers today.

July 25: Had the weekly meeting today. Things to do for next week: documentation of scripting changes, and sending in the next patch, which is the arithmetic parser. Decided to also start on writing an autoboot script, which will implement the current autoboot procedure, in a script. This could serve as a useful example. Now, an interesting part of the autoboot process is the PXE menu. There are some DHCP settings that need to be checked for that.

July 26: Prepared the arithmetic parser for the next patch: Arithmetic parser Also reading up on the PXE menu.