Ard/Lazlo,

I find your position on OvmfPkg, ArmVirtPkg,and edk2-platforms in edk2 to be detrimental to the overall success of the edk2 project.  The majority of edk2 consumers already have to deal with their platform not being part of the edk2 git repo and the fact that changes to edk2 may not work or cause conflict on their platforms.  This is the reality of working with edk2 and building a large diverse set of products.  In fact, because OVMF's preferential treatment and presence in the edk2 tree, others in the community are burdened by those changes (mailing list noise, git history/commits, git repo size, etc).   From someone who has developed and maintained platforms with edk2 for the last decade +, I can tell you that having OVMF in edk2 hasn't kept the tree free from regressions. I also don’t use it as a source for integration requirements because it is vastly different than physical platforms and has very little resemblance to my projects.

I share your concerns about regressions, ease of development, etc. I want to see tianocore develop workflows and processes that work for the full community.  That means we must take into account the needs of those that have platforms outside the edk2 repo.  We must build tools that make managing all platforms dependencies tenable.  We must create CI that can leverage a vast number of platforms as an indicator of breaking changes, yet not be gated on their success. We must have a process that lets all interested platforms efficiently interact with and be part of.  The tianocore community is in need of the larger UEFI ecosystem engagement and we must remove the barriers to get them involved.

As always I appreciate the discussion.

Thanks
Sean