Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] vexpress: Add support for the -bios flag to provide firmware

[Grant Likely]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:50:06 +0100, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 28 March 2014 17:57, Grant Likely <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Right now to run firmware inside the QEMU VExpress model requires
> > padding out the firmware image to the size of the virtual flash and
> > passing it in via the -pflash argument. If the firmware image is passed
> > without padding, then QEMU will fail.
> 
> Alex suggested on IRC that if your firmware build process
> is producing incorrectly sized output binaries this is a
> bug in your firmware's build process. I have some sympathy
> with this line of argument -- why is Tianocore producing
> undersized images?

It's not a flash image. It's a firmware executable binary. Padding it
out to the size of the flash precludes using the rest of the flash for
other data. Both U-Boot and UEFI build processes work this way, and have
done for a long time. I don't think it is unreasonable for QEMU to work
with files that are only the size of the executable.

g.