Change Proposal Name ACPICA Tools Update
Summary
For developers working with the ACPI subsystem, there are tools available from the reference implementation at http://www.acpica.org. These tools have been restructured over time and the current Fedora packages as a result contain either outdated versions or do not make available a complete set of tools. We propose an acpica-tools package that replaces both the existing iasl package and the the existing pmtools package in order to make all current tools available, and make it more straightforward in the future to keep them up-to-date.
Owner
- Name: Al Stone
- Email: ahs3@redhat.com
- Release notes owner:
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 20 (release is approximate; new versions are released monthly about the middle of the month)
- Last updated: 2013-05-17 (being updated to 20130626)
- Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Detailed Description
If a developer is working on ACPI tables for a given system, they can use the existing iasl and pm-tools packages to create and modify ACPI tables. However, there is an reference implementation of ACPI at http://acpica.org that provides a significant number of additional tools that have never been included in Fedora before -- for example, tools that allow one to create an ACPI table and execute the methods contained in the table in user space, instead of having to modify existing tables. We would propose adding all of these new tools (acpixtract, acpidebug, ...) in the new package.
Further, pmtools provides the acpdiump tool that used to live at http://lesswatts.org. That site has now been abandoned by the upstream developer and subsumed into the acpica.org toolset. Hence, there is no longer an upstream for the old acpidump, but there is a shiny new version available from acpica.org. We would propose therefore replacing pmtools with the proposed new package.
Finally, the old packaging did not run any of the test cases provided by the upstream developers. After some work by Linaro (see linaro.org), these tests have all been brought up to date and the new packaging for acpica-tools now runs the test suites in order to ensure the tools are functional.
Benefit to Fedora
1. Brings the Fedora distribution up-to-date for ACPI development and exploration 1. Improves the quality of the existing packaging by additionally running test suites 1. Consolidates and simplifies ACPI development tools so that they reflect the reference implementation as closely as possible
Scope
- Proposal owners:
The majority of this work is already done (please see BZ#904843). The iasl and pmtools packages will need to be deprecated and/or removed. The acpica-tools package will need additional updates to stay in step with upstream, complete review, and be included into the git infrastructure properly.
- Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Upgrade/compatibility impact
The new acpica-tools package has been designed to replace the existing iasl and pmtools packages. However, it also installs as alternatives the binaries that could possibly overlap with the older packages which should allow them to coexist.
How To Test
The package will automatically run two test suites when it is built; if these test suites do not succeed, the build will fail. The suites themselves test the implementation of the new version of iasl, and test the APIs provided by ACPI to users of the tables. While they are not exhaustive, the tests are fairly extensive.
Additional testing will be required for installation and removal of the package(s).
User Experience
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Dependencies
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Contingency Plan
- Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No
Documentation
N/A (not a System Wide Change)