Re: [Qemu-devel] Release plan for 0.12.0

[Jordan Justen]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 14:23, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jordan Justen wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 05:45, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Natalia Portillo wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> for target-i386 and target-x86_64:
>>>>
>>>> o EFI firmware emulation (as a machine or command line option)
>>>> o OS/2 1.x support
>>>>
>>>
>>> AFAIK, no one is actually working on these.  EFI is also not terribly
>>> useful
>>> without a CSM and I suspect porting SeaBIOS to tiano core is going to be
>>> a
>>> big effort.
>>>
>>
>> Several Linux distributions are getting UEFI support ironed out now,
>> so UEFI can be used without a CSM.  QEMU support for UEFI could
>> help the Linux distributions to enable UEFI support...
>>
>
> I see a CSM as a pre-requisite for merging a uefi rom.  A user can already
> use a uefi rom by simply using the -bios parameter so there's nothing
> inhibiting testing.  My concern about introducing a new machine type is that
> it would require duplicate testing and force the selection of uefi up
> through the management tool stack.

I understand your points.  You want to keep a single machine type and
try to support UEFI and legacy boots with that firmware.
Unfortunately, I don't know that we will be able to provide that via
OVMF.  There is no open source CSM for us to make use of.

And, it is true that -bios can be used for OVMF by those with a
particular interest in UEFI.  But for a more general audience, I think
without the -M switch a Linux distribution couldn't package qemu in
such a way that both a legacy bios and the OVMF firmware would be
available.

> OTH, uefi + a CSM based on SeaBIOS could be used as the default firmware.  I
> don't think it's a reasonable target for 0.12 but I think if someone
> actively worked on it, it would be possible for future releases.

I don't know of any efforts to create an open source CSM.  Is someone
working on converting SeaBIOS to act as a CSM?

For tianocore.org & OVMF we would further be restricted by requiring a
BSD licensed CSM.  Of course, if there was a SeaBIOS based CSM, then
I'm sure OVMF could be modified to make use of it easily enough.  We
just wouldn't be able to have the SeaBIOS CSM on tianocore.org and
part of the normal tianocore.org OVMF releases.

>
> Regards,
>
> Anthony Liguori
>