[Pkg-virtualbox-devel] Bug#691148: Bug#691148: Bug#691148: Please package virtualbox 4.2.2

[Frank Mehnert]

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".

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

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.

Kind regards,

Frank
-- 
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox
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