On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 09:21:30AM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote: > Hi, > > > > I guess the main question is who is using the ROM/BIOS sources in the > > > tarballs, and would this 2-step process work for those users? If there > > > are distros relying on them then maybe there are some more logistics to > > > consider since the make-release downloads are both time-consuming and > > > prone to network errors/stalls since it relies on the availability of a > > > good number of different hosts. > > > > Great, maybe Gerd can comment on splitting out firmware. > > I think the binaries are mostly a convenience feature for developers. > Distros typically build from source anyway, and typically they build > from upstream source instead of qemu submodule. > > The idea to split them out to a separate repo is exists for quite a > while. I have an old qemu-firmware repo laying around on my disk, which > basically moves roms/ + submodules and the binaries built from it over. > > I think with the switch to gitlab it doesn't make sense any more to > commit pre-built firmware binaries to a git repo. Instead we should > build the firmware in gitlab ci, i.e. effectively move the build rules > we have right now in roms/Makefile to .gitlab-ci.d/, then publish the > firmware binaries as build artifacts or gitlab pages. > > When done just remove the pre-build binaries from git and add a helper > script to fetch firmware binaries from gitlab instead. > > > QEMU mirrors firmware sources on GitLab too. We're able to provide the > > same level of download availability on our mirror firmware repos as for > > the main qemu.git repo. > > I think enabling CI for the firmware mirrors should work given that it > is possible to specify a custom CI/CD configuration file, i.e. use > something like > > /qemu-project/qemu/.gitlab-ci.d/firmware/seabios.yml > > or > > /qemu-project/qemu-firmware/seabios.yml > > as config file for the > > /qemu-project/seabios/ > > mirror. Then we can publish binaries using gitlab pages at > > https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/seabios/ > > That way we also don't need the roms/ submodules any more, i.e. we > can remove both sources and binaries for the firmware from the > release tarballs.
Thanks! For developer convenience it would be nice to avoid manual steps after git clone qemu.git. Maybe ./configure should check for firmware blobs and automatically download them. There could be a ./configure --disable-firmware-download option that distros can use to skip the download when building everything from source. Stefan
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