Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
rimage was originally moved to a different repository as it is an independent tool from SOF.

With changes since SOF2.4, we have more and more direct dependencies from SOF to rimage. IPC4 protocol requires metadata that is defined in firmware manifest (data maintained in toml files, rimage encodes this to firmware binary file).
Most recently, loadable module support was added to SOF firmware and this code depends on firmware file structure definitions that are needed both by rimage and the new SOF module loader.

The build dependencies are causing issues to downstream SOF users (e.g. zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr#62262 ).

Having the rimage manifest changes (like thesofproject/rimage#177) not tested by full SOF CI, is causing operational issues (problems caused by rimage changes are detected too late).

Describe the solution you'd like
Merge rimage back to sof repository as it is now more integrate part of SOF.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• alternative: duplicate manifest headers in SOF (these are part of the loadable modules ABI)
  - cons: does not help with SOF CI woes with rimage PRs

cc:

• ipc4: add get &set large config support #4808
• [RFC] rimage: Add support for multiple toml file rimage#179
• copy zephyr based sof image toml files from rimage to sof and split to platform and module toml #8243
• [FEATURE] Move logger/trace (and debug tools?) to other repository #2480
• [FEATURE] use west instead of submodules. #7901