Re: [PATCH 00/16] Cross compilation of embedded firmware

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 5/24/22 17:53, Alex Bennée wrote:
> Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> writes:
>
> > This is the next part of the firmware cross compilation story.  It only
> > looks at firmware that's strictly part of QEMU (optionrom, s390-ccw,
> > vof), and does not do docker cross compilers yet; but it takes the
> > infrastructure from tests/tcg/configure.sh and moves it in the main
> > configure script so that others can use it.
> >
> > I actually expect the compiler tests to move back to tests/tcg, running
> > at Make time after the docker images are built.  For now, the file is
> > moved as a whole, including both compiler detection and the tests.
>
> Isn't that just creating a bunch of unnecessary churn? The
> tests/tcg/configure.sh sciprt already has a bunch of special casing in
> it to detect various compiler features for the purposes of tests. It
> would be nice if we could keep it's history of warts intact.

Honestly, I don't know what things will look like one year from now.  I 
don't have 100% of the vision of how things will look, just enough to 
make informed guesses at each step.  So far I think it's gone pretty 
well, at the expense of some churn indeed.

What I know If the compiler tests do move back to tests/tcg, they 
probably won't look anything like the code that is there now.

In fact, they might even be done in Makefiles instead of configure, 
similar to the "cc-option" macro in pc-bios/optionrom/Makefile.  My plan 
was to experiment with that in pc-bios/optionrom, in the context of 
supporting docker-based cross-compilers, and then move whatever solution 
I come up with to tests/tcg.

If you prefer that I first try moving them to Makefiles to reduce future 
churn in the main configure script, I can do that, but probably not 
until ~August.

Paolo