Public bug reported:

>From version 4.1 (due in August 2019) onwards, QEMU ships the so-called
firmware "descriptor files".  These are small JSON files that describe
details about UEFI firmware binaries — such as the fimware binary path,
its architecture, supported machine type, NVRAM template and so forth.

You can see examples of these files in the upstream QEMU Git:
https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=tree;f=pc-bios/descriptors

    $> tree descriptors/
    descriptors/
    ├── 50-edk2-i386-secure.json
    ├── 50-edk2-x86_64-secure.json
    ├── 60-edk2-aarch64.json
    ├── 60-edk2-arm.json
    ├── 60-edk2-i386.json
    └── 60-edk2-x86_64.json
    
QEMU 4.1 itself will ship the above files.  However, Ubuntu's `ovmf`
package needs to ship modified versions of these JSON files that
correspond to the OVMF biararies shipped in Debian.  (See the first
reference further below for an example of Fedora did it.)

Why?  Allow me to quote Laszlo Ersek, upstream EDK2/OVMF maintainer:

    Distributions providing their own EDK2 packages would not include
    the descriptors from upstream QEMU, even if they otherwise package
    QEMU.  That's beause the descriptor files in QEMU match the firmware
    bundled with QEMU -- but the firmware images in the distros' own
    EDK2 packages are different.  So, if a distro provides an EDK2
    package, then the same EDK2 package should offer matching
    descriptors.  QEMU offers descriptors (soon) because QEMU
    technically distributes edk2 firmware binaries (soon).  [Where
    "soon" == QEMU 4.1]

References:

(1) Refer to this commit in Fedora's EDK2 package:
    https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/edk2/c/674b3c8a27a8 (Ship the
    JSON firmware "descriptor files")

(2) And here is a similar bug report for Debian:
    https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=932269

** Affects: edk2 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1836859

Title:
  RFE: Ship the firmware "descriptor files" as part of the 'ovmf'
  package

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