Nico Huber has posted comments on this change. ( https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/37514 )
Change subject: soc/intel/skylake: Add option to control microcode update inclusion ......................................................................
Patch Set 5:
Patch Set 5:
Patch Set 5:
Sorry, I'm late. I'm not very happy about the prompts. "Board can ..." doesn't sound like a user decision. Also, some prompts are even for soldered down CPUs. This is nothing a user should be prompted for.
Also, we already had two means to override the default decision:
- `config CPU_MICROCODE_CBFS_EXTERNAL_BINS`, and
- mainboard makefiles can overwrite `cpu_microcode_bins`.
Now, if a board maintainer would choose to do the latter, it would override the prompted Kconfig settings :-/
Basically this is an attempt to make this process more user-friendly and remove the requirement to edit Kconfig (or other) files. In fact, modifying these settings is a user decision. It is only required to do this when you run into trouble because of a large payload e.g. I can understand your position as well but this hugely depends on the definition of what a user is. If you look at the feedback from Angel Pons you can see the request here was to have this as a menu item. So this is already in a conflict with your view on how this should work.
There was no need to edit files, we already have config CPU_MICROCODE_CBFS_EXTERNAL_BINS. What this patch adds is a mapping from CPU names/descriptions to CPUID signatures that was missing before. It's a nice addition, but I don't see how the added Kconfig options make it more user friendly. They don't even have a help text, no sign that they are related to the added microcode updates. Also, they only affect config CPU_MICROCODE_CBFS_DEFAULT_BINS, but show up no matter if that is selected.
And for 90% of the boards the added Kconfig prompts are not necessary because we know what is soldered to the board. We try to avoid Kconfig prompts that can result in bricks, you just added a bunch.