[libvirt] [qemu RFC] qapi: add "firmware.json"

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 04/10/18 11:34, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:16:01AM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> On 04/10/18 08:27, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>>>   Hi,
>>>
>>>> - I considered adding wildcards (say, blacklist "all" i440fx machtypes,
>>>> present and future, for SMM-requiring OVMF builds), but then you get
>>>> into version sorting and similar mess. I considered fnmatch() --
>>>> basically simple ? and * wildcards -- but that's not expressive enough.
>>>
>>> I'd suggest whitelist with wildcards.  So the smm builds would get
>>> "pc-q35-*".
>>>
>>> libvirt knows about aliases, so it should be able to handle the "q35"
>>> shortcut like "pc-q35-${latest}".
>>>
>>> Or do you see another issue?
>>
>> Well, one issue I see is version sorting; I should say "Q35 but no
>> earlier than 2.4", and lexicographically, "2.11" sorts before "2.4".
>>
>> Anyway (also asking for Thomas's input here): if we run with your idea
>> to refer to exact mapping methods / firmware *implementation* types that
>> we know libvirt implements / supports as a "white box", do we still deem
>> machine type identification necessary? Because, libvirt already knows
>> (for example) that "ovmf_smm" requires pc-q35-2.4 or later. So we just
>> have to make a *reference* to that knowledge in the JSON file.
> 
> BTW, that's not quite correct - when libvirt handles the "smm" arg it
> checks if machine type == q35, and  QEMU version >= 2.4.
> 
> It is *not* checking the version of the machine type. ie it will happily
> use smm with  pc-q35-2.0, as long as QEMU version is 2.4. Perhaps this is
> not quite right,

(it's not)

> but we don't try to parse the version number out of the
> machine type, because we can't assume a specific format for the machine
> type version part. eg version can be "2.4", or it can be "rhel-7.0.0"
> or something else again on Ubuntu.

Indeed, that's exactly why I'm troubled about expressing a "minimum"
machine type version.

> 
> IMHO it would be valid to just keep life simple and only record the base
> machine type name that can use the firmware ie "pc", "q35", and ignore
> the fact that in some cases the firmware might require a specific version
> of the machine type.

Esp. with regard to SMM, there have been quite big jumps in usability /
stability across Q35 machtype versions. But, if it works for you, it
works for me.

(I double-checked Thomas's recent example about U-Boot, and he mentioned
the "ppce500" and "sam460ex" machine types, not machine type versions.)

Thanks,
Laszlo