Hi Peter!
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 04:17:49AM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
By creating a good intermediate format, we will eventually be able to replace many if not all BIOSisms with something better documented, maybe even something simpler and certainly something nicer.
This is why I'm "torn" on the issue. I can see the value in a good intermediate format - one that would allow coreboot to easily export a wide variety of static and dynamic data.
Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a good intermediate format available today. LAR looks nice, but it only seems useful for large blobs and it isn't supported by v2. The coreboot table is effectively the same technology as the binary ACPI/pir/mptable/smbios tables. I don't see a compelling advantage to defining new coreboot tables over using existing standard tables.
why translate from "coreboot->coreboot table->legacybios->smbios table" when we can just go from "coreboot->smbios table"?
Staying true to the design that coreboot is not a BIOS, but something better.
I'm not really sure what that means. Coreboot doing something different from a "BIOS" does not inherently mean that coreboot is better. So, if there is an intermediate format with compelling features - then I'm all for it. But, if a new intermediate format is just different or only slightly better - then I'd recommend using the existing standards.
Adding an additional program in between seems to make things more complicated.
Short term, yes - slightly more complicated but much better structured. Long term the additional program dies.
I agree 100% that if acpi/pir/mptable/smbios table generation is added to coreboot that it should be optional.
Thanks, -Kevin