Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] Machine description as data

[David Gibson]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 12:50:28PM -0600, Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 16:40 +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
[snip]
> > I briefly examined the DT source format and the tree structure it
> > describes for the purpose of QEMU configuration.  I decided against
> > using it in my prototype because I found it awfully low-level and
> > verbose for that purpose (I'm sure it serves the purpose it was designed
> > for just fine).  Issues include:
> > 
> > * Since the DT is designed for booting kernels, not configuring QEMU,
> >   there's information that has no place in QEMU configuration, and
> >   required QEMU configuration isn't there.
> 
> What's needed is a "binding" in IEEE1275-speak: a document that
> describes qemu-specific nodes/properties and how they are to be
> interpreted.
> 
> As an example, you could require that block devices contain properties
> named "qemu,path", "qemu,backend", etc.

Yes, it shouldn't be hard to annotate an IEEE1275 style tree with
extra information for qemu's use.  As for the other direction, in some
cases it may be appropriate for qemu's device tree code to fill in
missing device tree properties, based on what the device emulation
code knows about itself.

> > * Redundancy between node name and its device_type property.

Note that "device_type" may not mean what you think.  It describes
what methods the device support within the OF client interface.  New
device trees that aren't linked to a full OF implementation with
client interface should generally omit device_type in most places
(there are a few special cases for compatibility with OSes that expect
device_type properties in certain places).

> > * Property "reg", which encodes address ranges, does so in terms of
> >   "cells": #address-cells 32-bit words (big endian) for the address,
> >   followed by #size-cells words for the size, where #address-cells and
> >   #size-cells are properties of the enclosing bus.  If this sounds
> >   like gibberish to you, well, that's my point.

#address-cells and #size-cells takes a little getting used to, but
it's really not that bad.  It's just a way of representing the fact
that different busses have different sized address encodings.

-- 
David Gibson                    | I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au  | minimalist, thank you.  NOT _the_ _other_
                                | _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson