Re: vgabios and other guest related firmware

Zhang, Xiantao
2008-01-02T09:46:04Z

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belon wrote:
>>
>>> We also need to upload the ia64 firmware for kvm, and make it
>>> available for users use. At least, we need to provide the binary.
>>>
>>
>> beware that actually providing the binary without sources might be a
>> problem for some distributions (like debian and derivatives like
>> ubuntu).
>>
>> most likely getting the sources and a makefile which could be used
>> to build the binary and copy it to the qemu/pc-bios/ directory, at
>> release time or when the sources had been changed and it needs to be
>> rebuilt, and for convenience so it can be distributed with the
>> release tar.gz will be preferred.
>>
>> for hints on how to get that look at the Makefiles in the bios or
>> vgabios top level directories and the top level Makefile
>>
>>
>
> Note that we ship x86 binaries for two reasons:
> - qemu does it that way, and we inherited it, before the need arose to
> make modifications
> - obscure tools are needed to build the binaries (iasl and dev86)
>
> Since ia64 doesn't have these issues (is that right?) then we can
> probably do a source-only release.

Ia64 firmware build need edk tools(very big package), and very hard to
setup the environment correclty. And it is not friendly to users :(
Maybe binary is also needed.
Xiantao

>>> BTW, current ia64 binary has 2M size, is it OK to upload it to
>>> kvm-source tree ?
>>>
>>
>> if you are talking about the binary only, EFI BIOS from Intel, then
>> it could be problematic (because of the free software guidelines of
>> some distributions) and of course will need to have also some sort
>> of README file clearly specifying that the license allows for
>> re-distribution and can be used at least together with kvm (like the
>> ELPIN vga bios was licensed for BOCHS)
>>
>> IMHO is probably better to use only the GPL version with sources and
>> distribute that with kvm source packages and let the users or
>> distributions
>> to manage the distribution/installation of BLOBs otherwise as that
>> keeps the lawyers from distracting us from the interesting technical
>> issues.
>>
>
> I agree, let's avoid binary-only components if possible.