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GNU Libreboot

- We are working to make libreboot eligible to be added to the GNU system, - and call on the community to help with this effort. Back to home page -

- Firstly, the git repositories (for development) can be found on the git page. -

- Libreboot has been 100% philosophically compatible with GNU, from the day the project was founded (our goal is identical to GNU, - and our philosophy is identical to the one held by that project), but there are some - technical issues with it that make it incompatible with GNU at present. -

- So far, we have the following tasks to complete (there may be other tasks): -

- Convert the documentation to texinfo - partially complete. The docs have been converted using pandoc, - but now require a serious cleanup. - We wish to merge these into 1 documentation file (manual) in texinfo file. - The texinfo manual itself - is an example of how we would like to implement the new libreboot documentation. One file, but we - will distribute it separated into separate pages/sections, - and in other formats in addition to HTML. (info, PDF, etc). The current live documentation on the - libreboot website is the old pre-conversion documentation, - written in raw HTML. To encourage the transition, we are now refusing all new documentation submissions - that are not in texinfo format. -
- Texinfo is the official documentation format, for all GNU software.
- GNU Emacs has decent integration for editing Texinfo documents. See Texinfo mode. - However, any text editor should be fine (the lead developer of libreboot uses Vim).
- - i18n should be implemented from the start, so that we can start maintaining versions of the documentation - in non-English languages. GNU Gettext can be used for this. -
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- Modify the build system, to make use of standard GNU utilities: make, autoconf and so on. The current build system is - non-standard (but well documented), written mostly in BASH.Read these documents: -
- https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html
- https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Distributions
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- Document, extensively (and keep it up to date!) full and accurate information about package dependencies, libraries used, etc. - We already do this to a great extent (via an installation script for Trisquel and Parabola, and the overall build system in libreboot), - but we can do a better job documentation-wise. -
- Include ChangeLog and NEWS files in the distribution (in the release archives, but probably uncessary in the git repository). - ChangeLog entries can be generated automatically, using the gnulib gitlog-to-changelog script, and the NEWS file can be generated - from commit messages. - DONE! -
- ~~Re-license the documentation under GNU FDL.~~ - DONE! -
- ~~Make libreboot possible to build from source without network access.~~ - DONE! (Only in release archives. - Development in Git requires network access, for downloading the extra modules that go into the release archives. There is no way to avoid - this, due to what libreboot actually is - a boot firmware distribution, combining several projects, much like you have GNU/Linux distributions - which are identical in concept). -

- Not required, technically, but will make things easier in general, not just for GNU: -

- Modify the build system, to - directly download the - build dependencies - that libreboot - currently tells the - user to install from - their distribution - package repository. - (Only in Git. Release - archives would have - them already). Build - these from source, - with our own GCC - (re-using coreboot's - GCC, which libreboot - already uses). This - will make complete - corresponding - source provision - easier, because it - would be automated; - this is in contrast to - the present setup, - where the person - distributing binaries - has to include the - sources for build - dependencies from the - distribution that they - happened to use for - compiling those - packages. - -
- This will also make everything self-contained, and coreboot already has integration for cross-compiling. We can make cross compilation - of utilities for non-x86 architectures much easier, without relying on quirks from the user's GNU/Linux distribution, where the - only thing we need from their distribution is the necessary toolchain for building libreboot's own version of GCC, which would then take over
- - However, do not install these dependencies, only self-host them in the libreboot source archive. Also provide an option for the user to ignore libreboot's - GCC and dependencies, and use what their GNU/Linux distribution provides, when building from source. -
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+ This page used to list tasks for joining the GNU project. Libreboot + is since 14 May 2016 an official part of the GNU project. +