Control: tags -1 patch
John Keates writes ("Bug#858962: Request: enable OVMF at build time in 4.8 as
it does not require non-free anymore"):
> Package: src:xen
> Version: 4.8.1~pre.2017.01.23-1
> Severity: wishlist
Hi. Thanks for the report.
> Currently, OVMF is not enabled, probably because it used to require
> OVMF at compile time which would make for a hard dependency on
> non-free code. Since this is no longer the case, you could make it a
> run-time option by enabling OVMF for this package, and when a user
> would want to actually use it, they would only need to add a OVMF
> binary to a preset path themselves (i.e. by installing the non-free
> ovmf package).
I looked into this OVMF nonfreeness and it seems to be fixed:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=815618
> Around line 74 the compile-time options for Xen are listed, and enabling OVMF
> is as simple as adding one line:
>
> --enable-ovmf --with-system-ovmf=/usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd
>
> The path specified does not need to exist at compile time. In this
> case I chose to use the path where the OVMF package installs the
> binary firmware file so it can be automatically used.
Thanks for this testing.
I think that, given that UEFI is becoming quite common, it might be
worth adding a dependency of some kind to the Debian Xen packages, as
well as simply enabling ovmf support. But that's probably not a
blocker for fixing this.
> I'm not sure how to create a .patch file for this, but since it's one line
> with very clear results, I hope it's sufficient.
Indeed.
However: I do not intend to make this change at this stage of the
stretch release freeze.
If you (or someone else) gets preapproval from the release team, then
I would be prepared to do. But I think such approval would probably
be refused for good reasons. If someone wants to make such an
approval request, please let me know and I may be able to help
pre-review it etc. - on the condition that this isn't taken as
endorsement :-).
Thanks,
Ian.
