[edk2-devel] TianoCore Community Design Meeting Minutes

Fri May 3 08:45:35 UTC 2019

On 05/02/19 21:33, Sean via Groups.Io wrote:
> Laszlo,

(please add me to Cc: or To: directly when the email is directed at me
(as well); I could have easily missed this message, as it is only in my
list folder)

> Except for a very few platforms that are in the current edk2 repo
> today, everyone building products has to deal with this "split repo"
> reality.  It gets even harder when you account for different business
> units, different silicon partners, IBVs, ODMs, open source, closed
> source, secret projects, and so on.

I don't contest the problem statement.

We can look at what other high-profile open source projects do with this
problem.

For one example, the Linux kernel says, if it's not upstream, you're on
your own. And Linux carries loads of platform code.

I'm making an effort not to take such a hard-liner stance. We need to
find a balance as to how much we want to harm the *truly* open source
platforms, for the sake of proprietary downstreams of edk2.

My understanding is that the maintainers of edk2-platforms (the open
source ones anyway) would prefer an opposite code movement; i.e.
integrate everything in one upstream repository, for better
bisectability & tracking.

> The reason I want to bring forth the Project Mu tools to Edk2 is that
> everyone is forced to reinvent this process and tooling every time and
> it doesn't work very well.  If edk2 continues to ignore the challenge
> of most downstream consumers it continues to lead to the results of
> today. Very high cost of integration.  Very low quality of
> integrations and very few integrations into products (meaning products
> don't get updates).  The last couple of years has brought significant
> light to the challenges of updating platform firmware and has shown
> that the majority of products don't/can't get updates resulting in
> customers not being fully protected.
>
> Regarding submodules and boundaries. I completely agree except that I
> believe there are numerous boundaries within a UEFI code base.  As
> mentioned above one of our goals with splitting the code repositories
> is to have all code within a repository owned/supported by a single
> entity.

This is 100% counter to Open Source / Open Development / Distributed
Development.

I didn't invent the idea that edk2 *should* follow Open Development,
i.e. that it should be a good Open Source citizen. That decision had not
been made by me, it was in place when I started contributing.

I'm just saying that the direction you describe is *incompatible* with
Open Source / Open Development. A real open source project is
community-oriented, and the comminuty has shared ownership, as a whole.
If tomorrow we decide that FooPkg is now officially owned/supported by
the "single entity" called Company Bar (who happen to be a competitor to
Company Baz), will help Baz's contributions to FooPkg?

What you describe is a real problem of course. The open development
answer is that, if one prefers to keep things downstream, then the
rebase and integration burden stays with them, downstream, as well.

Maybe edk2 doesn't *want* to practice Open Development that much.

If we adopted "single entity ownership per repo", would that stay
aligned with the current mission statement?

    https://www.tianocore.org/

    Welcome to TianoCore, the community supporting an open source
    implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).
    EDK II is a modern, feature-rich, cross-platform firmware
    development environment for the UEFI and UEFI Platform
    Initialization (PI) specifications. [...]

> Another point to splitting is attempting to get code with business
> logic separated from core/common code.  Business logic often is
> different across products and if intermixed with core logic it adds
> significantly to the cost of maintaining the product.  Along your same
> thinking these different repositories do have different development
> models.  Many are closed source and have proprietary change request
> process.  They all release on different cadences, different
> dependencies and very different testing expectations so without a
> framework that provides some support this leads to challenging and
> complicated integration processes.

I certainly don't intend to dismiss these use cases. In my opinion, the
"upstream first" principle would help here too. Basically, don't ship
anything until at least the critical parts of it are merged upstream.

But, I don't want to get accused of being out of touch with reality. I
guess I'll have to defer to others with more experience in such
environments, and I should comment on specific edk2 proposals then.

> Single repo:
>
> It is not possible for most products.  Again when integrating large
> amounts of code from numerous places all with different restrictions
> it is not practical to have a single bisectable repository with good
> history tracking.  Some entities still deliver by zip files with
> absolutely no src control history.

Wouldn't you say that that is *their* problem? Absolutely deplorable
source code management?

Should we really destroy bisectability in upstream edk2 for their sake,
especially given that you can always extract sub-repositories
(mechanically, at that) from a unified repo, but not the other way
around?

> Many entities mix open and closed source code and make
> hundreds/thousands of in-line changes.  I just don't see a path where
> a product can have 1 git-merged repo and still be able to efficiently
> integrate from their upstream sources and track history.

Normally this is why someone tries to push as much code upstream as
possible; then downstream rebases are manageable.

> These tools are just a first step down a path to reshaping tianocore
> edk2 to be easier to consume (and update) by the ecosystem that
> depends on Edk2 for products.

Put differently, the first step to abandon the Open Development model,
for the sake of proprietary downstreams.

But, I can see myself becoming non-constructive here. I guess I should
withdraw from the general discussion, and comment on specific proposals
for edk2, when they appear.

(Speaking for Red Hat in this sentence: we certainly depend on edk2 for
products.)

> These tools also have solutions for Ci builds, binary dependencies,
> plugins, testing, and other features that edk2 will need for some of
> the practical next steps.

A side question here: what development model would you follow with these
tools themselves? (Because... the "willingness" we've witnessed, for
extending the email notifications sent by GitHub.com, is not
reassuring.)

Laszlo

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