[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS Debian package.

[Uwe Hermann]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 08:08:11PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Trying to be provocative.

With quite some success, I might add ;)


> > Yes, basically. Maybe there will be more, not sure yet.
> 
> Hm. Then I'd really drop this for now until there's some
> commensurability. A package count overhead of 50% is pretty much ;)

Agreed, I'll try to keep the number of packages reasonably small.


> > Is this a strict requirement? Wouldn't it be possible to compile it
> > once, and distribute it as /usr/bin/romcc in the Debian package?
> > Are any compile-time options involved (vs. runtime/commandline options?)
>  
> Not exactly a strict requirement, but romcc compiles within less than a
> second. This is not even 1% of the average compile time of a LinuxBIOS
> image. 
> 
> Possible yes, but I have not read a reason yet, why we should do such a
> change.

Oh, you would not need to do it in svn, if that matters. I could do the
change in the Debian package only...

I don't have a (very) strong opinion on this, it just feels a bit
strange to compile it every time. I mean, I don't build gcc every time
I want to compile a C program either, so why should I build romcc every time?


> In fact, if we find a bug in romcc now and fix it, we can point people to
> use revision XX from subversion and they are fine. I dont want to take
> the overhead of explaining people they have to update their debian
> package or switch the build process to use the "builtin version" for a
> build time reduced by less then a second. Even opening my mail client 
> takes longer than that.

Well, that's a general problem with packages - they _always_ lag behind
upstream, some more and some less. Using a mixture of upstream stuff
_and_ Debian stuff is probably not a good idea.
So either people use the Debian packages for code+tools+docs, or they
don't and use the svn code directly; nobody should mix both, that'll
result in problems, I guess.

As for romcc - if there's a change in svn, you'll have to tell people
anyways, regardless of whether they use Debian or not, and regardless
of whether Debian ships a /usr/bin/romcc or only the source of it.


> > Also, I'll have to check the lxbios license, the DISCLAIMER file has some
> > strange stuff which might pose problems for Debian...
> 
> What's wrong? The software is GPL. 

GPL is fine of course. What needs checking is whether the other comments
cause problems or not (I don't think they will, though), e.g.:

This work was produced at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (UC LLNL) under contract no. W-7405-ENG-48 (Contract 48)
between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and The Regents of the
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The rights of the Federal Government are reserved under Contract 48 subject
to the restrictions agreed upon by the DOE and University as allowed under
DOE Acquisition Letter 97-1.

#############################################################################

OUR NOTICE AND TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Our Preamble Notice
-------------------

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    W-7405-ENG-48 with the DOE.

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> > Or linuxbios-payloads which contains all of them?
> 
> If at all, pack it into one of them.

Agreed.

 
> In my opinion linuxbios should not be more than two packages:
> 
> bios-utils and linuxbios-images (and I doubt whether we really want an
> -images package)

You mean image as in the images which will be flashed? I.e. pre-built binaries,
so that "end-users" would not need to compile anything at all? If that's
(easily) possible that would be a good idea indeed. It'll lower the learning-curve
for LinuxBIOS quite a lot, I think...


Anyways, I have created a small manpage for flashrom (Debian policy requires a
manpage for every binary executable) which will be in the package, feel free
to put it in svn if you want and if it makes sense...

The manpage probably needs some fixing and checking - e.g. I'm not sure I got all
of the authors right etc. Feel free to send me corrections...

Btw, where should I send (smaller) patches which fix some issues I notice while I'm
doing the packaging? This mailing list or the bug tracker?


Cheers, Uwe.
-- 
Uwe Hermann 
http://www.hermann-uwe.de
http://www.it-services-uh.de  | http://www.crazy-hacks.org 
http://www.holsham-traders.de | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
-------------- next part --------------
.TH FLASHROM 1 "July 26, 2006"
.SH NAME
flashrom \- the universal LinuxBIOS flash utility
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B flashrom \fR[\fB\-rwvEVflih\fR] [\fB\-c\fR chipname]
         [\fB\-s\fR exclude_start] [\fB\-e\fR exclude_end]
         [\fB-m\fR vendor:part] [file]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B flashrom
is the universal LinuxBIOS flash utility.
.SH OPTIONS
If no file is specified, then all that happens
is that flash info is dumped and the flash chip is set to writable.

.B "\-r, \-\-read"
Read flash and save contents into file.
.PP
.B "\-w, \-\-write"
Write file into flash (default when file is specified).
.PP
.B "\-v, \-\-verify"
Verify flash against file.
.PP
.B "\-E, \-\-erase"
Erase flash device.
.PP
.B "\-V, \-\-verbose"
More verbose output.
.PP
.B "\-c, \-\-chip" <chipname>
Probe only for specified flash chip.
.PP
.B "\-s, \-\-estart" <addr>
Exclude start position.
.PP
.B "\-e, \-\-eend" <addr>
Exclude end postion.
.PP
.B "\-m, \-\-mainboard" <vendor:part>
Override mainboard settings.
.PP
.B "\-f, \-\-force"
Force write without checking image.
.PP
.B "\-l, \-\-layout"
Read ROM layout from file.
.PP
.B "\-i, \-\-image" <name>
Only flash image name from flash layout.
.PP
.B "\-h, \-\-help"
Show a help text and exit.
.\".PP
.\".B "\-\-version"
.\"Show version information and exit.
.SH BUGS
Please report any bugs at https://openbios.org/roundup/linuxbios/.
.SH LICENCE
.B flashrom
is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR romcc (1).
.SH COPYRIGHT
2000 Silicon Integrated System Corporation
.br
2004 Tyan Corp
.br
2005-2006 coresystems GmbH
.br
2003 Niki W. Waibel
.SH AUTHORS
Yhlu <yhlu at tyan.com>
.br
Stefan Reinauer <stepan at coresystems.de>
.br
Niki W. Waibel <niki.waibel at gmx.net>
.PP
This manual page was written by Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de>,
for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).
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