Linux EFI Going Through Spring Cleaning Before RISC-V Support Lands

The Linux EFI boot code is going through some "spring cleaning" ahead of the RISC-V EFI support landing that still could make it for the Linux 5.7 kernel cycle this spring.

The EFI kernel code is seeing some cleaning before the RISC-V support is merged since that increases the complexity of the code-base and for testing due to having an extra architecture in there. With this early batch of EFI changes to be staged until the Linux 5.7 merge window in April, the RISC-V support isn't yet included but it still could get pulled together in the next month for making the 5.7 kernel.

In addition to cleaning up the code pre-RISC-V, the Linux kernel EFI code is introducing a generic Linux/UEFI boot protocol to better interface with UEFI changes being made by the GRUB boot-loader.

The EFI changes for Linux 5.7 also include support for UEFI specification v2.8A changes, simplified handling of the EFI properties table on 64-bit ARM, and various other changes. More details on this batch of Linux EFI changes via this mailing list post.