Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu-riscv] [RFC v1 0/5] RISC-V: Add firmware loading support and default

From: Alistair Francis <alistair23@gmail.com>
To: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Cc: Alistair Francis <alistair.francis@wdc.com>,
	Bin Meng <bmeng.cn@gmail.com>,
	"open list:RISC-V" <qemu-riscv@nongnu.org>,
	"qemu-devel@nongnu.org Developers" <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>,
	Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@sifive.com>
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu-riscv] [RFC v1 0/5] RISC-V: Add firmware loading support and default
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2019 10:59:43 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKmqyKOh3J07yg3dbaNcOaSzfbDZJJ-kjN3pBh+KqAKq05hzTA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <11f4e4ff6037427f52824ba586f8a330c12d8dfd.camel@redhat.com>

On Thu, Jun 20, 2019 at 1:16 AM Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2019-06-19 at 11:23 -0700, Alistair Francis wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 7:42 AM Bin Meng <bmeng.cn@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 10:30 PM Alistair Francis <alistair23@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 7:26 AM Bin Meng <bmeng.cn@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >  pc-bios/opensbi-riscv32-fw_jump.elf | Bin 0 -> 197988 bytes
> > > > > >  pc-bios/opensbi-riscv64-fw_jump.elf | Bin 0 -> 200192 bytes
> > > > >
> > > > > Since we are considering adding "bios" images, I prefer to add the
> > > > > pure binary images instead of ELF images here.
> > > >
> > > > I didn't think about that. Can we just boot them in QEMU like we do
> > > > with the ELFs?
> > >
> > > Yes, use load_image_targphys() instead of load_elf().
> >
> > Ah, that is obvious. I'll update it to use the bin files then.
>
> I'm unclear on the advantages of using one format over the other,

The main one that I see is that everyone else is already using .bin
and no one else is using .elf.

> but one question comes to mind: once this is in, we will probably
> want to have OpenSBI packaged separately in distributions, the same
> way it already happens for SeaBIOS, SLOF and edk2-based firmwares.
>
> Will using either of the formats prevent that from happening?

Both options allow this.

OE-Core already packages OpenSBI by default, Fedora and Debian are
moving to OpenSBI for RISC-V targets as well.

Any distro that supports the RISC-V toolchain (which is all
upstreamed) can build OpenSBI.

Alistair

>
> --
> Andrea Bolognani / Red Hat / Virtualization
>