Wanted: A Working ELF2IRX.

[ooPo]

So, what would be involved in making this happen? I know next to nothing about how an IRX file works or I'd just tackle it myself...

[blackdroid]

You could always check out the buildsystem for ps2drv devices.

[Guest]

There's a rundown on the IRX file format somewhere I think in the Documents section of ps2dev.org. All it is is a relocatable ELF with an extra section that Sony uses.

If you go to freshmeat.net, there are a ton of ELF manipulation libraries and such that make it extremely easy to open an ELF file, add a few sections or scan through others, and write out the resulting ELF file. This is pretty much what you'd be doing with elf2irx, so you should check one out. I think the one I was looking at is called libelf or libmelf or something.

As we can see from the current elf2irx source, doing ELF parsing yourself is very errorprone :P.

-This was me, mrbrown.

[nosense]

So, why is elf2irx needed if the compiler can spit out irx's all on it's own??

[mrbrown]

So, why is elf2irx needed if the compiler can spit out irx's all on it's own??

There are many compilers capable of generating ELFs for MIPS R3000. The only set that can generate the IRX format that the IOP expects are Binutils 2.9 and GCC 2.8.1 - these are the versions Karmix patched to generate IRXs.

elf2irx is needed for any other GCC/binutils that isn't patched. Getting the newer compilers patched is a work-in-progress.

Little known fact: If your tools can generate ECOFF, you can use those instead of IRXs on the IOP :P. You can even set your ECOFFS to load at an absolute address.