[U-Boot] [PATCH v3 7/8] x86: efi: Add a hello world test program

[Simon Glass]

Hi Alex,

On 19 October 2016 at 01:09, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
>
>
> On 18/10/2016 22:37, Simon Glass wrote:
>> Hi Alex,
>>
>> On 18 October 2016 at 01:14, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
>>> On 10/18/2016 04:29 AM, Simon Glass wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It is useful to have a basic sanity check for EFI loader support. Add a
>>>> 'bootefi hello' command which loads HelloWord.efi and runs it under
>>>> U-Boot.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>> Changes in v3:
>>>> - Include a link to the program instead of adding it to the tree
>>>
>>>
>>> So, uh, where is the link?
>>
>> I put it in the README (see the arm patch).
>>
>>>
>>> I'm really not convinced this command buys us anything yet. I do agree that
>>> we want automated testing - but can't we get that using QEMU and a
>>> downloadable image file that we pass in as disk and have the distro boot do
>>> its magic?
>>
>> That seems very heavyweight as a sanity check, although I agree it is useful.
>
> It's not really much more heavy weight. The "image file" could simply
> contain your hello world binary. But with this we don't just verify
> whether "bootefi" works, but also whether the default boot path works ok.

I don't think I understand what you mean by 'image file'. Is it
something other than the .efi file? Do you mean a disk image?

>
>> Here I am just making sure that EFI programs can start, print output
>> and exit. It is a test that we can easily run without a lot of
>> overhead, much less than a full distro boot.
>
> Again, I don't think it's much more overhead and I do believe it gives
> us much cleaner separation between responsibilities of code (tests go
> where tests are).

You are talking about a functional test, something that tests things
end to end. I prefer to at least start with a smaller test. Granted it
takes a little more work but it means there are fewer things to hunt
through when something goes wrong.

Regards,
Simon