Re: [PATCH] Report any problems with loading the VGA driver for PPC Macintosh targets

[Programmingkid]

> On Aug 31, 2021, at 5:08 PM, BALATON Zoltan <balaton@eik.bme.hu> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 31 Aug 2021, Programmingkid wrote:
>>> On Aug 30, 2021, at 5:47 PM, BALATON Zoltan <balaton@eik.bme.hu> wrote:
> 
>>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2021, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 at 21:29, Programmingkid <programmingkidx@gmail.com> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> I found out that there are two pc-bios folders. One in the root directory
>>>>> and one in the build directory. QEMU is looking in the pc-bios folder
>>>>> located inside the build folder. The qemu_vga.ndrv file is only located
>>>>> in the root directory pc-bios folder. I think a good solution to this
>>>>> issue is to first remove one of the pc-bios folders. I'm not sure if it
>>>>> is just me who has two pc-bios folders or if everyone does.
>>>> 
>>>> Having two pc-bios folders is expected. The one in the source tree is
>>>> the one which has the files we actually carry around in git. The one
>>>> in the build tree is created by 'configure' and populated with symbolic
>>>> links back to the files in the source tree. We need this one because
>>>> the QEMU executable doesn't (and shouldn't) know where the source tree is:
>>>> when it is looking for files it will look in places relative to the
>>>> location of the executable itself (ie relative to the build tree)
>>>> as well as places set by configure (used when you install QEMU and
>>>> its various supporting files).
>>>> 
>>>> The reason qemu_vga.ndrv is not in the pc-bios folder in the build
>>>> tree is because when that file was added we forgot to add handling
>>>> for it in configure. I'm not sure why nobody else has fallen over
>>>> this in the intervening 3 years: running QEMU from the build tree
>>>> will never find the file, and it will not be installed via
>>>> 'make install' either.
>>> 
>>> This file is a driver for MacOS and not many people run that old OS. Those 
>>> who do probably use Howard's binaries and follow his guides that tell you 
>>> to use -L pc-bios on command line. I always wondered why that's needed when 
>>> it should find it by default but this explains it and probably also your 
>>> question why nobody complained.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> BALATON Zoltan
>> 
>> This does sound like a good explanation. I am pretty sure I was able to use 
>> my Mac OS 9 VM without the -L option in the past and still have many video 
>> resolutions available.
> 
> Depends how far back in the past was that. If before the meson conversion 
> that introduced the build dir maybe you run it from the source dir (if used 
> in-tree build) and it found the file. I'm not sure if it still works if you 
> run from source dir such as build/qemu-system-ppc that is without changing 
> current dir to build dir. If it works that way then maybe you ran it like 
> that before. (Or maybe had an installed version and it picked up the file 
> from there.)
> 
> Regards,
> BALATON Zoltan

That was around version 2.10 so a while back.

I just realized, I sent a patch to the developer list that fixes the missing 
qemu_vga.ndrv problem, but I do not know which maintainer to send it to. Who 
maintains the configure script? A search of the maintainers page was not clear 
as to who this is.