Re: [coreboot] [Bochs-developers] Moving Bochs BIOS into a separate project

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 15.05.2009 21:37, Stanislav wrote:
> > Even with uefi, it still needs a CSM (compatibility module) which is 
> > more often than not a full blown legacy BIOS that's been ported to run 
> > in the CSM environment.
> > It's going to be a long, long time before CSMs can be dropped (if ever).
>
> You didn't understand m probably. I believe CoreBoot will implement the CSM
> sooner or later.
> And my assumption that it will happen sooner.
>
> Stanislav
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anthony Liguori [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 10:23 PM
> To: Stanislav
> Cc: [e-mail]; 'Volker Ruppert'; 'Avi Kivity'
> Subject: Re: Moving Bochs BIOS into a separate project
>
> Stanislav wrote:
> > BTW, why you, active Bios developers, not just take a commit permissions
>
> for
> > Bochs CVS ?
>
> I want to build the BIOS as part of the QEMU build process.  To do this, 
> I need to import the source tree into the QEMU source tree.
>
> With git, you can use submodules to reference an external git tree 
> within a local git tree.  This means I can have a bios directory in the 
> QEMU source tree that automagically points to an external git tree 
> containing the BIOS source tree.
>
> I don't want to have the full bochs source tree in QEMU so I need a 
> split repository.  Instead of maintaining this on my own, I thought I 
> would see if there's interest in doing a proper split of the project 
> (just like with VGA Bios).
>
> I'm happy with having people push patches to bochs-devel.
> > We suggested it a few times to Sebastian but he refused ...
> >
> > About CoreBoot:
> > Commercial BIOS are moving to UEFI interface and keep legacy stuff only
> >
> > for compatibility. 
> > CoreBoot go UEFI well but they are shooting to replace commercial BIOSes
> > once so they must have legacy stuff support (as any real Bios has).

If coreboot ever supports UEFI, UEFI will be implemented as an optional
compatibility module.
> Even with uefi, it still needs a CSM (compatibility module) which is 
> more often than not a full blown legacy BIOS that's been ported to run 
> in the CSM environment.

Coreboot has SeaBIOS as BIOS compatibility module and it is optional, of
course. coreboot+SeaBIOS can boot Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows
7 besides most BSDs and Linux.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[Bochs-developers] Moving Bochs BIOS into a separate project

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 15.05.2009 22:08, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> If coreboot ever supports UEFI, UEFI will be implemented as an optional
> compatibility module.

There is a UEFI compatibility module for coreboot. I had forgotten it
existed because almost nobody wants EFI stuff (especially because you
can boot Linux just fine without EFI/BIOS). Sorry.
> Coreboot has SeaBIOS as BIOS compatibility module and it is optional, of
> course. coreboot+SeaBIOS can boot Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows
> 7 besides most BSDs and Linux.

coreboot already works fine with Qemu and also with Qemu+KVM. In fact,
lots of testing is done in Qemu because it allows fast boot test cycles.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel