Re: [Qemu-devel] Release plan for 0.12.0

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

Jordan Justen wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 05:45, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>   
>> Natalia Portillo wrote:
>>     
>>> for target-i386 and target-x86_64:
>>>
>>> o EFI firmware emulation (as a machine or command line option)
>>> o OS/2 1.x support
>>>       
>> AFAIK, no one is actually working on these.  EFI is also not terribly useful
>> without a CSM and I suspect porting SeaBIOS to tiano core is going to be a
>> big effort.
>>     
>
> Several Linux distributions are getting UEFI support ironed out now,
> so UEFI can be used without a CSM.  QEMU support for UEFI could
> help the Linux distributions to enable UEFI support...
>   

I see a CSM as a pre-requisite for merging a uefi rom.  A user can 
already use a uefi rom by simply using the -bios parameter so there's 
nothing inhibiting testing.  My concern about introducing a new machine 
type is that it would require duplicate testing and force the selection 
of uefi up through the management tool stack.

OTH, uefi + a CSM based on SeaBIOS could be used as the default 
firmware.  I don't think it's a reasonable target for 0.12 but I think 
if someone actively worked on it, it would be possible for future releases.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori