Re: [Qemu-devel] [qemu RFC] qapi: add "firmware.json"

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 04/10/18 11:32, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 10.04.2018 11:22, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> On 04/10/18 09:33, Thomas Huth wrote:
> [...]
>>> Alternatively, what about providing some kind of "alias" or "nickname"
>>> setting here, too? So the EDK2 builds would get
>>> SystemFirmwareType="edk2" and "SystemFirmwareAlias="uefi" for example.
>>
>> I hope I understand you right -- I think your suggestion ties in with my
>> other email I just sent in this thread. So, we could tell libvirtd,
>> "this firmware is of type 'UEFI', and you must use the 'ovmf_smm'
>> mapping method to run it, with this file or that file as varstore template".
>>
>> We could even describe the parameters for this or that mapping method
>> structurally in the schema (in a discriminated union in QAPI JSON, or in
>> an XSD choice element). For example, "ovmf" and "ovmf_smm" would both
>> take "OvmfSplitFileOptions" -- a list of single varstore template files
>> with feature enum contants attached  --, while "SeaBiosOptions" would be
>> an empty structure.
> 
> Sorry, I've got no clue about ovmf_smm and the other things you've
> mentioned here ;-)
> 
>> I feel the key question here is whether we are allowed to directly
>> reference a mapping method we know libvirt implements. If we are, that
>> makes things a lot clearer (and easier, I should hope).
> 
> Key question is maybe rather: Do you want to design / implement
> something that is libvirt-only here, or rather something generic that
> could also be used for other upper layer tools that do not use libvirt?
> (... and looks like Daniel just had the same comment in another mail in
> this thread ...)

Yeah, we can't target libvirtd as the sole consumer.

Laszlo