Re: [PATCH] xen: Create EFI_VENDOR directory

From: Jason Andryuk <jandryuk@gmail.com>
To: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
Cc: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>,
	George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>,
	 Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>, Julien Grall <julien@xen.org>,
	 Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@kernel.org>,
	Wei Liu <wl@xen.org>,  xen-devel <xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] xen: Create EFI_VENDOR directory
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 11:36:48 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKf6xpuVrLmsptxkMfZfb_ekeLHQpS6S8AzOZ0i5MDL9YWf1aA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <f53db67e-8344-8da7-6658-c521d2e3c527@suse.com>

On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 11:15 AM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
>
> On 22.03.2021 15:59, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> > On 22/03/2021 14:52, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >> On 22.03.2021 14:33, Jason Andryuk wrote:
> >>> make install-xen fails when EFI_VENDOR is set (=fedora) with:
> >>> install: cannot create regular file '/home/user/xen/dist/install/boot/efi/efi/fedora/xen-4.15.0-rc.efi': No such file or directory
> >>>
> >>> Create the EFI_VENDOR directory so xen.efi can be installed within.
> >>>
> >>> This removes the need for Fedora and Qubes xen.spec files to manually
> >>> create the directory in advance.
> >> While I'm not strictly against, I'd like to point out that it was
> >> deliberate to not create this directory here. I also didn't expect
> >> anyone's xen.spec to do so. Instead I'd expect the distro to create
> >> it during OS installation. If this was a bad assumption, I'd prefer
> >> if the commit message here could point out why such an expectation
> >> won't hold in general.

I didn't write this for an rpm xen.spec - I just cross referenced out
of curiosity.

> > This reasoning is broken for anything other `make install DESTDIR=/` on
> > a live system.
> >
> > It is incompatible with how RPM, deb, etc packages work.
>
> I'm afraid I don't understand, for both of your statements. If distro
> installation put in place the designated directory, there wouldn't be
> any live system lacking it, and there wouldn't be any concern in the
> packaging of any software.
>
> To take a perhaps too extreme example - packages typically expect e.g.
> /usr to exist as well, don't they?

But you have to install -d ${D}/usr before install ${D}/usr/file, right?

It's a surprising sequence to:
1) see 'EFI installation only partially done (EFI_VENDOR not set)'
2) set EFI_VENDOR
3) see xen.efi installation fail

I was working on a fedora system, and I was using `make && sh
install.sh` to install (but be sure to `rm -r dist/install/var/run`
since otherwise that'll break booting).  I wanted xen.efi to end up in
/boot/efi/EFI/fedora after running `sh install.sh`, and EFI_VENDOR
appeared to be the way to do it.  Again, it was surprising to enable
an option and then have it break.

Regards,
Jason