Re: GRUB 2.12 release, etc.

[Daniel Kiper]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 11:30:47AM -0500, Glenn Washburn wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jun 2022 17:48:39 +0800
> Xiaotian Wu <wuxiaotian@loongson.cn> wrote:
>
> > Hi Daniel.
> >
> > Thank you for your release plan.
> >
> > I would like to ask, can GRUB-2.12 add a new LoongArch architecture support?
> >
> > LoongArch is a RISC instruction set from China. Currently, Linux-5.19
> > adds LoongArch CPU support and will support complete EFIStub in version
> > 5.20.
> >
> > On GRUB, including 2 patch sets:
> >
> > 1. Add the basic support of LoongArch so that GRUB can run on the
> > LoongArch machine. See
> > https://github.com/loongarch64/grub/tree/dev/patchwork/base
> >
> > 2. Add the loader for kernel, but it depends on a series of patch of
> > Loadfile2. See https://github.com/loongarch64/grub/tree/dev/patchwork/efi
> >
> > These patchs are already available, and tested on CLFS and Archlinux for
> > LoongArch.
> >
> > If we plan to support LoongArch in GRUB-2.12, I will update these patchs
> > and release the 4th version of the patch for review.
>
> I think it would be great to have LoongArch in GRUB. It should be a hard
> requirement that support for the architecture be added for the make
> check tests. This will require that QEMU have support for LoongArch. It
> looks like the current release of QEMU does not have support for
> LoongArch, but there is a patch series[1] which adds it. I presume that

What is the status of this patch series right now? If it is in or close
by I would ask for at least minimal tests for the LoongArch support in
the GRUB.

> will get accepted at some point. I'd suggest the tests be made assuming
> that (or some other patch LoongArch patch series) will get accepted.
> The INSTALL file can be updated to indicate that QEMU > 7 is required,
> or something like that. Also, if there's any special build requirements
> those should also be noted in the INSTALL file and docs/grub*.texi
> should be updated for the new arch. For example, what's the minimum GCC
> version needed to compile?

Yeah, that would be nice if INSTALL file is updated too.

Daniel