Hi Andy,
On 20.10.21 15:53, Andy Pont wrote:
Nico wrote...
How about we set up some guidelines how to proceed when adding support for a new platform that requires any blobs? My vague idea is as follows: Before the very first commit for such a new platform can be merged, a set of predefined, blob related questions (to be discussed) should be answered.
Some ideas for questions from the top of my head:
That seems like a long list of questions and so my question in return would be how practical is it?
splendid! Your reaction shows how much we need such questions: Without pushing us to reflect about them, people may not even consider alter- natives. I think it's very practical.
Taking EC firmware as an example, in many situations the short answer is “it resides in the same binary image as coreboot and is a blob because that is all there is”.
Why stop at the short answer? I have to admit, you'd have to replace `silicon vendor` with `ODM`, or whoever supplies the blob, but otherwise how do the questions not apply? Don't you want to consider alternatives? People did before and succeeded pretty much. Don't you want bugfixes?
Even if you'd have to answer many questions with `no (the ODM doesn't allow / is not interested`, that's at least something that nobody has to investigate later. Currently almost nobody knows anything about the blobs we use in coreboot and everybody has to start considerable inves- tigations to answer simple questions like "will there be an update?". Why not at least try to answer these questions honestly up front?
Based on your list of questions I’m not convinced that would be sufficient to get it merged.
No. If you are confronted with a list of questions and simply choose to ignore them, why would that be sufficient?
Nico