Re: [edk2-announce] Re: Soft Feature Freeze starts now for edk2-stable202008

["Abner Chang" <abner.chang@hpe.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laszlo Ersek [mailto:lersek@redhat.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2020 10:30 PM
> To: Chang, Abner (HPS SW/FW Technologist) <abner.chang@hpe.com>; Leif
> Lindholm <leif@nuviainc.com>
> Cc: devel@edk2.groups.io; liming.gao <liming.gao@intel.com>;
> announce@edk2.groups.io; afish@apple.com; Kinney, Michael D
> <michael.d.kinney@intel.com>
> Subject: Re: [edk2-announce] Re: Soft Feature Freeze starts now for edk2-
> stable202008
> 
> On 08/19/20 15:34, Chang, Abner (HPS SW/FW Technologist) wrote:
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Laszlo Ersek [mailto:lersek@redhat.com]
> >> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2020 9:19 PM
> >> To: Leif Lindholm <leif@nuviainc.com>; Chang, Abner (HPS SW/FW
> >> Technologist) <abner.chang@hpe.com>
> >> Cc: devel@edk2.groups.io; liming.gao <liming.gao@intel.com>;
> >> announce@edk2.groups.io; afish@apple.com; Kinney, Michael D
> >> <michael.d.kinney@intel.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [edk2-announce] Re: Soft Feature Freeze starts now for
> >> edk2-
> >> stable202008
> >>
> >> On 08/19/20 13:48, Leif Lindholm wrote:
> >>> (Slightly trimmed recipient list due to different patch being
> >>> discussed.)
> >>>
> >>> So, I can't make this call, because I'm the one who messed up.
> >>>
> >>> This patch does exactly what I had requested Abner to do some time
> >>> back (off-list, unfortunately), and I was *convinced* I gave it an
> >>> R-b as soon as it hit my inbox - until Abner nudged me about it yesterday.
> >>>
> >>> The patch in question is
> >>> https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/topic/76021725
> >>
> >> My understanding is:
> >>
> >> (1) there is an external project that consumes the FDT library in
> >> EmbeddedPkg, meaning the lib class header
> >> "EmbeddedPkg/Include/libfdt.h"
> >> and the lib instance "EmbeddedPkg/Library/FdtLib/FdtLib.inf",
> > [Chang, Abner] Yes
> >>
> >> (2) the lib class header pulls in "fdt.h" and "libfdt_env.h",
> > [Chang, Abner] yes
> >>
> >> (3) the external project is not edk2-platforms,
> > [Chang, Abner] yes
> >>
> >> (4) the external project wants -- for some strange reason -- edk2's
> >> "libfdt_env.h" to provide an strncmp() function (or function-like
> >> macro), with that particular stncmp() implementation not being needed
> >> in either edk2- platforms or edk2 itself,
> > [Chang, Abner] yes, at least so far
> >>
> >> (5) the patch for adding said strncmp() was posted on Aug 6th (at
> >> least when viewed from my time zone), i.e., before the SFF,
> > [Chang, Abner] Yes
> >>
> >> (6) it was reviewed 12 days later (within the SFF)
> > [Chang, Abner] yes.
> >>
> >> If my understanding is correct, then I don't see how this patch could
> >> be considered a bugfix -- even as a feature addition, it seems hardly
> >> justified to me --, and there would have been ~8 days before the SFF to
> review it.
> >>
> >> I think we should postpone the patch until after the stable tag.
> > This patch is important because the edk2-stable202008 would be the stable
> tag (if this patch is accepted) for booting RISC-V platform to Linux kernel with
> EFI Runtime service on either real platform and QEMU. We can publish this
> information in RISC-V community which is considered as a valuable milestone
> for RISC-V edk2 port.
> 
> Let's move out the dates for the stable tag then, by one week:
> 
> - let the SFF start on 2020-08-21
> - let the HFF start on 2020-08-28
> - let's release edk2-stable202008 on 2020-09-04
> 
> Release slips are permitted and there have been examples.
Appreciate for this.

> 
> What doesn't make sense is making rules and then breaking them
> opportunistically, whenever they're uncomfortable. If that's a frequent
> occurrence, we should pick different rules, or -- again -- if this is a very
> important patch, we should delay the release for it.
> 
> BTW what about reverting the OpenSBI change? You could still call
> sbi_strncmp() -- rather than strncmp() -- in the "helper" lib.
I replied this in another thread.
> 
> Thanks
> Laszlo