Re: [RFC] Plan to delete ShellBinPkg from edk2/master

[Leif Lindholm <leif.lindholm@linaro.org>]

Hi Laszlo,

On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 10:49:16AM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> On 04/02/19 07:38, Bi, Dandan wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > ShellBinPkg is the remaining binary package in Edk2 repo.  We plan
> > to delete ShellBinPkg from edk2/master, and keep source ShellPkg
> > only in edk2 repo.
> > Before the deletion, I will update the existing consumers in Edk2
> > and Edk2Platforms to use ShellPkg directly.
> > 
> > If you have any concern please raise here before mid-April . If
> > there is no concern, I will create patches for this task after
> > mid-April.
> > 
> > Bugzilla for this task:
> > https://bugzilla.tianocore.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675
> 
> (adding a few CC's)
> 
> I think we should not remove ShellBinPkg without a replacement *somehwere*.
> 
> A shell binary that is built from a validated edk2 tree, with a set of
> library resolutions and PCD settings that are known to keep platform
> dependencies *out* of the shell binary, is extremely useful.

Agreed. However, I am not sure that accurately describes what we have
today.

> IIRC, Andrew suggested earlier that we should treat the shell even as an
> "OS", with better compatibility standards than we currently maintain.
> 
> I think we should only remove ShellBinPkg if we permanently offer a
> separate download location instead, and we rebuild the shell binary from
> "ShellPkg/ShellPkg.dsc" at every stable tag.

I think this sounds like an exellent improvement. When I saw the
patch, I did immediately think maybe I should start including them in
my Linaro releases. But if we could automate a build of binaries for
all supported architectures, and have a place to publish them, that
would be much better.

Best Regards,

Leif

> In that case, removing ShellBinPkg would indeed improve the edk2 tree,
> in my opinion.
> 
> Thanks,
> Laszlo