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

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 04/03/19 04:17, Ni, Ray wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: edk2-devel <edk2-devel-bounces@lists.01.org> On Behalf Of Laszlo
>> Ersek
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 2, 2019 4:49 PM
>> To: Bi, Dandan <dandan.bi@intel.com>; edk2-devel@lists.01.org
>> Cc: Cetola, Stephano <stephano.cetola@intel.com>; Kinney, Michael D
>> <michael.d.kinney@intel.com>; Gao, Liming <liming.gao@intel.com>; Carsey,
>> Jaben <jaben.carsey@intel.com>
>> Subject: Re: [edk2] [RFC] Plan to delete ShellBinPkg from edk2/master
>>
>> 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.
> 
> I understand the concern.
> Maybe a "Shell.dsc.inc" provided by ShellPkg which lists all library resolutions
> , PCD settings and build options can be included by platform DSC to resolve such
> dependency issue.
> 
>>
>> 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 do not quite understand. All other modules in edk2 repo are source-included by
> OvmfPkg and daily commits directly generates new binaries for OvmfPkg.
> I do not think we should have a different "binary-generation" model for
> shell.

The standalone shell binary would not be offered for OVMF, but for all
possible UEFI platforms (physical and virtual alike).

People frequently turn to the UEFI shell for debugging UEFI issues on
their physical machines. Such users are generally not interested in
building the shell from source, just booting it as easily as possible.

Thanks,
Laszlo


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