Hi,
If we make it a rule that PCI is`setup before ACPI tables are read, then QEMU can do the patching itself when it detects BIOS reading the tables.
Approach makes sense to me. The ordering constrain shouldn't be a big burden, hardware detection+bringup (including pci setup) is the first thing done by the firmware, loading/generating acpi tables is one of the last things. And it avoids the need to communicate the addresses (or patch locations) between qemu+firmware.
What do you want to use this for? pmbase and xbar are simple, they are just a single register read. pci io windows needs a root bus scan, but should be doable too.
Gerd, Laszlo,others, does this rule work for alternative firmwares?
It surely works for coreboot, and I would be very surprised if this causes trouble for ovmf.
cheers, Gerd