[SeaBIOS] Advise on updating SeaBIOS in stable

[Anthony Liguori]

On 01/12/2010 10:51 PM, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 01:43:47PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>    
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm ready to cut another qemu stable release and I'm contemplating
>> whether to update to 0.5.1 in stable.  Generally speaking, we try to
>> limit stable to bug fixes and changes that aren't user visible.
>>
>> 0.5.1 looks like a point on the master branch as opposed to a
>> separate branch.  I wonder what the thinking is within SeaBIOS about
>> what sort of changes will be in the 0.5.x series vs. what would
>> result in 0.6.0.
>>      
> Hi Anthony,
>
> I didn't have a particular release numbering scheme in mind when I
> tagged 0.5.1.  I'd probably lean towards making a "v0.5.0.x" branch if
> we want an update with just critical bug fixes.
>
> However, there have only been a few bug fixes (mostly workarounds for
> compiler oddities), though the yield fix (fb214dc7) and ram over 4gig
> fix (669c991d) should go in.
>    

I actually need the compiler fix to build on my laptop (F12) so I've 
included that too.  Care to take a look at 
git://git.qemu.org/seabios.git stable-0.5.0?  It survives some light 
testing and I'll be doing more thorough testing overnight.

If you want to add some more and/or tag a release, I'll resync again 
before cutting 0.12.2.

> If you're looking to pull in 32bit pcibios support, then I don't think
> it would be worthwhile to rebase to a stable branch, as the 32bit
> pcibios support is easily the biggest user visible change in v0.5.1
> (in the sense that Linux will call 32bit pcibios if it's available).
>    

Unless there's a strong demand for it, I'd like to hold off on 32bit 
pcibios support.

Thanks,

Anthony Liguori

> A couple of other changes could be user visible (eg, mptable), but I
> think the risk here is pretty small (assuming we haven't introduced a
> regression).
>
> So, I'm okay with a stable branch (eg, v0.5.0.x), but I'm not sure
> what you would like to see in that branch.
>
> -Kevin
>