Re: [edk2-platform][PATCH v1 1/1] EmbeddedPkg/VirtualRealTimeClockLib : Reduce DEBUG message verbosity

["Leif Lindholm" <leif@nuviainc.com>]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 21:50:20 +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 at 21:43, Leif Lindholm <leif@nuviainc.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 11:50:27 +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > > On Sat, 20 Feb 2021 at 22:46, Leif Lindholm <leif@nuviainc.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > *How* annoying was this?
> > > >
> > > > This is kind of useful information, well at the "would be good to see
> > > > in a regular DEBUG build" level.
> > > >
> > > > This change will have suddenly effectively hidden a message that was
> > > > already present in many platforms, where they were not (very) annoyingly
> > > > repetitive during a normal boot.
> > > >
> > > > It feels the test suite is not the thing that we need to optimise
> > > > debug output for.
> > > >
> > > > Is there some alternative way we can rate limit this?
> > >
> > > Given that the sole purpose of this library is to paper over the fact
> > > that the platform violates the spec, and lacks the ability to tell
> > > time, I think it makes little sense to obsess over how wrong the value
> > > is that it returns.
> >
> > I'm not obsessing about anything, I'm saying that using tediousness
> > when running a testsuite as an argument, potential issues with the
> > only aspect that makes this implementation useful without having to
> > rebuild firmware every few weeks are now hidden.
> >
> > If we truly don't care about the feature, nuke it. Don't hide when it
> > breaks.
> >
> 
> Nuke what exactly? I think the library has a use, I simply don't see
> the point of reporting 25-50 times every boot that no timestamp was
> recorded in a variable.

Nuke the variable and always use the build timestamp EPOCH.
I would prefer that to silent failure.

Or we can figure out and alternative way to stop it spamming the
console.

The library is declared as a BASE library, but that's clearly untrue
as it depends on UefiRuntimeLib.

So we could, for example, break out the "check for EPOCH in variable"
into a protocol and print the message only once at protocol init.
Or we could add a Pcd for "no point, I have no persistent storage".

/
    Leif