On 14.11.2012 08:27, Frank Mehnert wrote: > On Tuesday 13 November 2012 17:55:14 Felix Geyer wrote: >> On 12.11.2012 12:19, Frank Mehnert wrote: >>> It is correct that we switched from bcc to Open Watcom to compile the PC >>> BIOS as well as >>> the VGA BIOS. The reason is indeed that bcc is unmaintained since years, >>> has many bugs >>> and creates code which is far away from being optimized. And we didn't find >>> an >>> appropriate alternative to Open Watcom. >>> >>> But it is not true that Open Watcom is required to build the BIOS of >>> VirtualBox. If Open >>> Watcom is not available, an alternative Assembler file can be used to >>> create the BIOS. >>> See here: >>> >>> https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/Devices/BiosCommon >>> Code >> >> Right, but Open Watcom is required to build the BIOS from source ("preferred >> form for >> modification"). That makes VirtualBox a candidate for the Debian contrib >> repository as it >> is free but requires non-free software to build from source. When the >> package is in contrib >> the assembler file could be used to build the BIOS. > > In my opinion this depends on the definition of the term "source code".
Debian has basically adopted the GPL definition of source code: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. > The VirtualBox source code tarball ships two alternative variants of the BIOS > source code: > The first variant is C code mixed with Assembler code (in > src/VBox/Devices/PC/BIOS/* and > src/VBox/Devices/Graphics/BIOS/*). The second variant is pure Assembler code > which can be > found in > > src/VBox/Devices/PC/BIOS/VBoxBiosAlternative.asm and > src/VBox/Devices/Graphics/BIOS/VBoxVgaBiosAlternative.asm When you want to modify the BIOS you change the code in the files of the first variant so only that is considered the source code of the BIOS. The BiosAlternative assembler files are just pre-generated files that need to be updated whenever the code changes. > Both variants are part of the source code tarball, and the second variant > allows it to build > VirtualBox even if Open Watcom is not available. It should not matter that > the second variant > is generated from the first variant because that generation is done by the > VirtualBox team > and we ensure that the 2nd variant will produce the same object code as the > 1st variant. That is a problem because it's impossible to modify the BIOS (e.g. by adding a distro patch) without someone running Open Watcom. Building and running software in Debian main needs to be self-contained but Open Watcom is required at least when you modify the upstream BIOS code. Regards, Felix -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
