New subject: Kconfig branch boards [was: 2022-04-20 minutes]

20 Apr 2022


      # 2022-04-20 - coreboot Leadership
Next meeting: 2022-05-04
## Attendees:
 Jay, Martin, Felix, Christian, Piotr, Tim, Ron, Arthur, Julius, Felix Held,
 David, Stefan, Paul, Patrick
## Decisions
* Martin will write up a document about when platforms would be moved to a
  branch:  Basically only when it hinders progress, not because it's untested.
* Martin will do an example of Kconfig where the platforms have been removed
  keep the mainboard names in the tree.  When selected, it will show the branch
  where the platform is maintained.  We can also include the last known good
  commit for current mainboards.
* Patrick will look at adding the security mailing list to the page at
  [http://mail.coreboot.org%5D(http://mail.coreboot.org)
* Felix Singer will investigate adding better user authentication to our redmine
  server.
## Minutes
### [Felix S] The German government wants to fund open source projects.
More information will follow next year 2022. [1]
* I did some research and asked around, since I didn’t hear anything. The
German government agreed on this funding last year, but their presented
household finance plan (~22th March) doesn’t contain anything for open
source. The final finance plan will likely be decided this summer. Until
then it’s possible to change that.
  * Official statement from OKFN (only german) [2]
  * Alternative funding projects are the [Prototype
    Fund](https://prototypefund.de/en/) and the [Hardware Prototype
    Fund](https://hardware.prototypefund.de/en/), but they are expecting you
    to invent something new and all participants of a group should have their
    residents in Germany. Prototype fund is going until 2024.  5 or 6 projects
    are accepted every 6 months, and a project can get up to 50,000 euros.
    * Something “new” would have to be added to coreboot.
    * Hardware prototype fund is similar, but more specific to hardware.
  * [Piotr] [Technology Common Trust Open Firmware
    Fund](https://technologycommons.org/OFF/) in cryptocurrency.  50k Euros.
    Mostly for EU citizens, but have funded north american projects in the
    past as well.
  * What do we want to do with these funds?
    * Do the people working on the project get the funds?
    * Do we just put these up on the website as a way to help get coreboot
     projects funded if someone wants to do something?
### [Martin] Moving platforms to a stable branch.
* What are the requirements?
  * I think (roughly) everyone agrees that platforms can be moved to a release
    branch if they’re blocking forward progress.
    * Is this the ONLY reason things should be removed?
      * Felix H, Paul: yes
* Martin will write up something about this and push it to
documentation to review.
  * David: We discussed before that platforms would be removed if it hasn’t been
    tested.
    * Give a release cycle or two to have it tested and remove it if it doesn’t
      get tested in that 6 months.
    * Boards that are moving to a stable/release branch are announced in the
      release notes prior to being moved, so there is time to update/test a
      target if a developer wishes to keep it in main.
    * Put the last known working version in the Kconfig.
* Paul: Need to avoid having too many branches. ChromeOS, for example, has
  hundreds of branches that are difficult to understand. Security patches would
  need to be ported to many branches.
* Ron: Everyone acts like leaving an unused target in the tree has no cost, and
  that’s not true.
  * There are other costs than just the jenkins builds.
  * FelixS many of us use freetime to do the maintenance, and this could be
    better used.
* Can we make a requirement going forward that all mainboards must have
  maintainers and can we require that the mainboards be tested by the
  maintainer?  Does this place too much of a burden on people contributing
  mainboards?
  * Julius: This may be a bit extreme. If we remove things that haven’t been
    tested in the last 6 monts this will remove most of the tree.
  * Martin: Can chromeos test all of their boards.
    * Answer: Not really.
* Julius, David: There is an advantage to maintaining old mainboards that keep
  us away from focusing on specific architectures.
  * Also, people interested in porting coreboot to a board will look for
    examples. This could be some random embedded single board computer, or an
    experimental work done for a new architecture (POWER9 work based on POWER8
    work?).
  * Ron: Keep old code in the tree, but stop building it.  Then it can be used
    as a reference.
### [dhendrix] Make GCC the official compiler of coreboot? [3]
* This is basically simply continuing what we're doing now, but making it formal
  instead of an unwritten rule.
* Julius: Just because some extensions are allowed (like dollar signs in names),
  we don’t need to allow them.
* [Martin]Should coreboot follow the linux kernel’s lead and look to switch to
  -std=gcc11 [4]?
  * The makefile is already specifying gcc11, so no change is needed here. We
    should document it somewhere though.
### [Martin] Proposal for handling platforms moved to a stable branch
to make them easier to use:
* Add all those mainboards back into the Kconfig in ToT, just with the branch
  name that they’re being maintained in and which host compiler is needed.
* Offer to check out that branch if desired.
* Branches are already being built by jenkins, so patches can be pushed directly
  to the 4.11, 12, 14, 15, and 4.16 branches.
* Update buildgcc on those branches to pull the tools from the coreboot download
  site instead of the original sites.
* Martin will implement and post for review.
### [Martin (Arthur)] SMM security fixes [5]
* Backport to 4.14, 15, & 4.16 branches.
 * Martin will do releases of the branches after the fixes are in.
* Should this have gone to the security mailing list instead of the
general mailing list?
  * Probably.  Arthur looked for the security mailing list, but didn't find it.
     * Add to the mailman interface page?  Is this possible?
       * Patrick will look at this.
### [Martin(Arthur)] Deprecate lb_serial uart_pci_addr field [6]
* How does this help us?
  * It removes ugly code.
* We’d still want to keep the field in the structure so that a payload that uses
  it doesn’t misinterpret the field.
  * Make this field reserved.
### [Jay]: Martin, any sign of the ITRenew server?
  * No, still no signs of it.  :-(
### [Martin] New page at coreboot website:  Help the coreboot project.
* Add small projects
* Add requests for testing.
  * Make it easier to test things.
    * FelixH: Build an image, post coreboot output & dmesg output and have this
      parsed and added to the test list.
    * Replacement for board status.
    * Don’t need to check out the 2GB git repo.
      * Paul will take a look at how to download less.
    * Script doesn’t always work.
* Felix s:  Add a control server that allows distributed testing of mainboards
  for people.
  * Need to be some sort of authentication mechanism for pushing - git serves
    this purpose.
  * David: Make a branch that can be checked out.
    * Martin has a script that will remove old versions.
### [FelixH] Can we add oauth authorization to redmine?
* FelixS: There’s a plugin, but it’s not officially supported.
* FelixH: is there a bugtracker that better integrates with gerrit?
  * FelixS: we can look, but redmine has the best interface in my opinion, and
    it is very customizable.
  * FelixH: Not suggesting switching, but it's a hassle to use separate
    credentials.
[1]: https://sovereigntechfund.de/en
[2]: https://okfn.de/blog/2022/03/stf-offener-brief/
[3]: https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/message/3C2Q...
[4]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.18-C11-Plan
[5]: https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/PAT6C...
[6]: https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/RYKUJ...
# Notice
Decisions shown here are not necessarily final, and are based
on the current information available. If there are questions or comments
about decisions made, or additional information to present, please put
it on the leadership meeting agenda and show up if possible to discuss
it.
Of course items may also be discussed on the mailing list, but as it's
difficult to interpret tone over email, controversial topics frequently
do not have good progress in those discussions.  For particularly
difficult issues, it may be best to try to schedule another meeting.

2022-04-20 - coreboot Leadership meeting minutes