On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 14:23, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
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.
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.