[LinuxBIOS] buildrom

[Jordan Crouse]

On 16/09/07 16:53 +0200, Uwe Hermann wrote:
> I'm not so sure. Maybe it actually _is_ a good idea to integrate (parts
> of) buildrom in the v3 build process? It would sure make the
> "user experience" better. The question is how much work this will be.
> I guess we'd want to change quite a lot of buildrom's inner workings in
> that case (and v3's for that matter). If so, we should keep buildrom
> as a separate project in v2, but integrate it completely in v3.

I can see both sides of the argument.  On one side, having a completely
separate entity allows us to make changes to the build system and the
payloads without forcing somebody to accept a new version of the LinuxBIOS
code.  It also allows us to choose different revisions for different
platforms based on the stability of said platform.  This to me is important
for new users.

On the other hand, multiple steps are confusing, though ideally, if buildrom
was good, you shouldn't be aware that there are multiple steps, it should
be pretty smooth.  It actually gets better with v3, since we no longer have
to build the payload into the v2 process, we can build the payload and the
ROM in separate and independent steps, and put them together with LAR later.

The thing about buildrom that I like the best, I think, is that we can 
script in all the knowledge we need for each individual platform (e.g.  
wgetting VSA or a video BIOS for a particular platform); this is something
that I think would end up being pretty klunky within LinuxBIOS itself, and
prone to error, especially if we tried to get generic with it.

I think what I need to do is polish up my v3 patches for buildrom and get
them out there, so that we can evaluate apples to apples and see what needs
to be done.  

Jordan

-- 
Jordan Crouse
Systems Software Development Engineer 
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.