[Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Jan Kiszka]

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There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>
---

 Makefile |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 66c28e5..43baa8b 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ ifdef CONFIG_WIN32
 LIBS+=-lwinmm -lws2_32 -liphlpapi
 endif
 
-build-all: $(TOOLS) $(DOCS) roms recurse-all
+build-all: $(TOOLS) $(DOCS) recurse-all
 
 config-host.mak: configure
 ifneq ($(wildcard config-host.mak),)


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[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Alexander Graf]

On 09.07.2009, at 09:12, Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de> wrote:

> There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
> qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
> binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
> 'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.

Well, Anthony specifically asked me to make the roms get built  
automatically whenever possible.

So that behavior is actually on purpose :-)

Alex

>
> Signed-off-by: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>
> ---
>
> Makefile |    2 +-
> 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
> index 66c28e5..43baa8b 100644
> --- a/Makefile
> +++ b/Makefile
> @@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ ifdef CONFIG_WIN32
> LIBS+=-lwinmm -lws2_32 -liphlpapi
> endif
>
> -build-all: $(TOOLS) $(DOCS) roms recurse-all
> +build-all: $(TOOLS) $(DOCS) recurse-all
>
> config-host.mak: configure
> ifneq ($(wildcard config-host.mak),)
>

[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Jan Kiszka]

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Alexander Graf wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 09.07.2009, at 09:12, Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de> wrote:
> 
>> There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
>> qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
>> binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
>> 'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.
> 
> Well, Anthony specifically asked me to make the roms get built
> automatically whenever possible.
> 
> So that behavior is actually on purpose :-)

Then quite a few things need to be fixed:
 - host tool generation (signrom, I think there were several approached
   under discussion - but what is preferred now?)
 - disabling the build for incompatible tool chains (mingw32?)
 - do not automatically copy stuff into the source dir (absolute no-go
   if you want to keep it clean from build outputs)

So for now I would simply disable the build - unless I missed that there
are already patches pending to fix all this.

Jan


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[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Anthony Liguori]

Jan Kiszka wrote:
> There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
> qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
> binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
> 'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.
>   

Yeah, it needs fixing but we absolutely want to build the roms as part 
of the normal build process.

When a user types make install from a source tarball, if they have the 
proper tool chain, we should be building everything from scratch and 
installing the versions that we built.

-- 
Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Paul Brook]

On Thursday 09 July 2009, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Jan Kiszka wrote:
> > There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
> > qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
> > binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
> > 'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.
>
> Yeah, it needs fixing but we absolutely want to build the roms as part
> of the normal build process.

I disagree. For the most part I'd expect roms to be better maintained as a 
side project.

> When a user types make install from a source tarball, if they have the
> proper tool chain, we should be building everything from scratch and
> installing the versions that we built.

I think the chances of the user having appropriate toolchains readily 
available (without significant additional per-rom configury) are extremely 
slim.

Paul

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Anthony Liguori]

Paul Brook wrote:
> On Thursday 09 July 2009, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>   
>> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>     
>>> There is no point in generating and copying the optionsrom each time
>>> qemu is build. It's a maintenance task given that we carry them as
>>> binaries already. And that task could also be triggered explicitly via
>>> 'make roms'. Solves the mingw32 build breakage, too.
>>>       
>> Yeah, it needs fixing but we absolutely want to build the roms as part
>> of the normal build process.
>>     
>
> I disagree. For the most part I'd expect roms to be better maintained as a 
> side project.
>   

For things like gpxe where there's a well defined boundary between QEMU 
and the rom, yes, that makes sense.

For something like the PC BIOS, it's proven to be very difficult to 
maintain it out of tree.  It's difficult for people to develop patches 
for it, difficult for people to test those patches, and then difficult 
for the maintainers to pull in those patches.

Making it part of the tree and a standard part of the build system will 
tremendously simplify that.

> I think the chances of the user having appropriate toolchains readily 
> available (without significant additional per-rom configury) are extremely 
> slim.
>   

Actually, for x86, all of our ROMs will just use GCC so when building 
x86 on x86, it's very likely the right tool chain is available.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Paul Brook]

> > I think the chances of the user having appropriate toolchains readily
> > available (without significant additional per-rom configury) are
> > extremely slim.
>
> Actually, for x86, all of our ROMs will just use GCC so when building
> x86 on x86, it's very likely the right tool chain is available.

Except when it isn't, for example when building with a windows binary.
Also, x86 is only one of many targets qemu supports. If you're serious about 
rebuilding roms as standard, then at bare minimum you need to handle sparc and 
ppc as well as x86.

Paul

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Anthony Liguori]

Paul Brook wrote:
>>> I think the chances of the user having appropriate toolchains readily
>>> available (without significant additional per-rom configury) are
>>> extremely slim.
>>>       
>> Actually, for x86, all of our ROMs will just use GCC so when building
>> x86 on x86, it's very likely the right tool chain is available.
>>     
>
> Except when it isn't, for example when building with a windows binary.
>   

That's a simple problem that has to do with the way ld is being used.  A 
patch was posted that actually works with the mingw ld.

> Also, x86 is only one of many targets qemu supports. If you're serious about 
> rebuilding roms as standard, then at bare minimum you need to handle sparc and 
> ppc as well as x86.
>   

Yup.  That's why we need to probe for toolchains in order to determine 
whether roms can be built.  If you're a developer making changes to 
OpenBIOS, clearly you are going to have the appropriate tool chains 
installed.

> Paul
>   


-- 
Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Paul Brook]

> > Also, x86 is only one of many targets qemu supports. If you're serious
> > about rebuilding roms as standard, then at bare minimum you need to
> > handle sparc and ppc as well as x86.
>
> Yup.  That's why we need to probe for toolchains in order to determine
> whether roms can be built.  If you're a developer making changes to
> OpenBIOS, clearly you are going to have the appropriate tool chains
> installed.

IMO a developer changes to a rom is a special case.

If you're arguing that roms should be built by default, for everyone, then I 
disagree and don't think this is feasible. Most users simply don't have the 
prerequisites, and don't want to have to cofigure everything even when they 
do.  If you care about this (for reproducibility or licencing reasons) then it 
should be all or nothing. I don't buy "It works for x86-on-x86 most of the 
time" as a valid argument for anything. We either build things by default, or 
we include binaries, not both.

If you're talking about developers modifying the roms, then most of the 
arguments above still apply. Chances are you're only actually interested in 
one rom anyway, so building it separately really isn't significant extra 
hassle.

Having everything in one source tree maybe makes sense. Except that most roms 
are already used by several projects. What you really want is to coordinate 
releases with the upstream maintainers, having a qemu branck/fork if it's 
really that hard to get changes integrated back.  In the case of the pc-bios 
it probably wants to be split into a sparate project, rather than being part 
of bochs.

Paul

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Drop roms from standard build

[Filip Navara]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Paul Brook<paul@codesourcery.com> wrote:
>> > I think the chances of the user having appropriate toolchains readily
>> > available (without significant additional per-rom configury) are
>> > extremely slim.
>>
>> Actually, for x86, all of our ROMs will just use GCC so when building
>> x86 on x86, it's very likely the right tool chain is available.
>
> Except when it isn't, for example when building with a windows binary.
> Also, x86 is only one of many targets qemu supports. If you're serious about
> rebuilding roms as standard, then at bare minimum you need to handle sparc and
> ppc as well as x86.
>
> Paul

Actually windows binaries of MinGW can built this just fine, you just
have to link it to the native platform format (PE-COFF) and then
objcopy it to binary. The rest should work just like on Linux. I'm
building the BIOS from time to time on MinGW and while it is annoying
to modify the build files to work for MinGW I'd be happy to maintain
it for QEMU.

Best regards,
Filip Navara