Re: vgabios and other guest related firmware

[Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belon <carenas-kLeDWSohozoJb6fo7hG9ng@public.gmane.org>]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 05:46:04PM +0800, Zhang, Xiantao wrote:
> 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 :(

you wouldn't expect users to rebuild the firmware, but distributions or the
providers of the binaries and that have the environment needed, because they
are also the ones working with the sources.

are you referring to this edk? 

  https://edk.tianocore.org/

> Maybe binary is also needed.

Just because the binary is very difficult to make, shouldn't prevent importing
the sources if they are available under a compatible opensource license and
they had been modified to work with KVM.

of course it should preclude the build to try to generate the binary by
default just like it does now for bios and vgabios, so that final users that
don't care can just use the already generated binaries for convenience.

if the binary hasn't been modified and corresponds to some known release which
is publicly available and is licensed for public redistribution in a way
that is compatible with kvm's licenses then it could be imported.

but even in that case would be probably better to let the distributors or
users to handle that for themselves and avoid all the legalese IMHO.

Carlo

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