I'm happy to say that UVLoader is now in beta. That means the targeted goals below have been met
- Load ELF to memory
- Resolve NIDs
- Portable (only depend on scelibkernel, which is loaded by all games no hard-coded memory addresses of functions), in theory it should be easy to port to another exploit and also in theory it should run on different firmware versions provided the exploit isn't patched
- Verbose (lots of logging to see what the error is) and well documented (the next developer can take over easily when the time comes)
- Small (~15KB) excluding the homebrew it's loading
I've listed here
https://github.com/yifanlu/UVLoader/wiki what "needs" to be done before the loader is "complete", but they are of small concern. So I guess the question here is: when can I use it? Well, I've always said that the loader is just one more step in the journey to homebrew. Below is a list of what else needs to be done, but again, just a reminder that at any point, the exploit(s) used by UVL could be patched by sony either intentionally or not.
- A working open toolchain/SDK that is able to generate ELFs of the proper format (with NID tables and function stubs and etc). This is being worked on.
- Developers to take the SDK and UVL and either port PSP homebrew over (taking advantage of the better processor and more memory) or build new homebrews (e.x port the android N64 emulator since it's also ARM)
Now this may change at a future date and I don't have complete say over everything, but after the tools are stable, the plan is to slowly distribute them throughout month(s) first to the most trusted developers, then to a bit less trusted developers and so on until the general people get it. I feel this is the best plan because the tools are useless to normal people without homebrews to use.