Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add BIOS splash image support

Anthony Liguori
2008-12-16T20:28:35Z

Blue Swirl wrote:
> On 12/16/08, Laurent Vivier <Laurent.Vivier@bull.net> wrote:
>
>> This series of patches adds a nice BIOS startup splash screen.
>>
>> It adds a "-splash" option allowing to specify the picture file name (a 640x480 (or less) and true color PNG) to display. You can enable/disable fade in,
>> fade out and bootmenu. The time to display the image can be also given (in
>> seconds).
>>
>> Idea and some parts of code are stollen from VirtualBox (GPLv2/CDDL).
>>
>> [PATCH 1/3] Correct fw_cfg_add_callback()
>> [PATCH 2/3] [BIOS] Add splash image support
>> [PATCH 3/3] [QEMU] Add BIOS splash image
>>
>
> On second thought, there is no Gtk/Qt GUI because that is supposed to
> be external to Qemu. By the same logic, why should there be any splash
> screen? The external GUI can probably show it as easily using the same
> Gtk/Qt/whatever.

You need it to be consistent on the SDL/VNC display.

Modern BIOSes have splash screens. I don't see why our BIOS shouldn't
have one too.

> The control channel may still be needed.
>
> Alternatively the BIOS could load the image and fade parameters from a
> new ROM or from the configuration device and draw it to screen. This
> would need some PNG support to BIOS, or that the image stored in raw
> form.
>

Yeah, having QEMU render to the VGA directly is a bit ugly. It would be
nicer if the BIOS actually rendered the image but I'm not sure I think
we should reject the patch just because it doesn't.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>