Re: [PATCH] xen: Create EFI_VENDOR directory

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 23.03.2021 14:41, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] xen: Create EFI_VENDOR directory"):
>> On 23.03.2021 13:34, Jason Andryuk wrote:
> ...
>>> On Fedora, RPMs drop EFI binaries directly into /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/.
>>> grub, shim, fwupdate and xen are all packaged that way.  It seems
>>> reasonable to have those important binaries tracked by the package
>>> manager.
>>>
>>> Does SuSE populate EFI_VENDOR from EFI_DIR when some boot loader
>>> script is called?
>>
>> Yes. And back at the time, when I consulted our EFI person, I was left
>> with the impression that this is the only reasonable approach. The
>> primary reason, as said, was that the EFI partition as a whole may get
>> rebuilt perhaps even from scratch at any point. Hence it's not
>> reasonable to expect package-managed files to live there.
> 
> I agree with this analysis but it is for people like Fedora to decide
> how they want to build their packages.
> 
> There is also the case of ad-hoc packages (eg our "make debball")
> which the user might reasonably choose to have dump things in the EFI
> system partition.

Well, it that's deemed reasonable, then perhaps yes. Albeit such
ad-hoc packaging could then also involve the creation of that dir.

> Conversely, I see no downside to the mkdir.  Jan, is there some actual
> harm in it ?  If not, we should be accomodating to people's build and
> packaging strategies even if we don't entirely approve of them.

"Actual harm" is relative: Nothing's going to break afaict. There'll
be a leftover dir from an install immediately followed by an
uninstall. I consider such okay for the purpose of the install step
that I did outline; I wouldn't consider it okay for a package
install/uninstall. But nothing worse, I guess. So bottom line - my
objection is not to be taken as a NAK. If everyone else wants the
change, then so be it.

Jan