Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 5/5] ne2k_isa: add property for option rom loading.

[Gerd Hoffmann]

> > > > It's pc-specific though, so when we go the route of loading roms
> > > > unconditionally we need to wrap that into a machine-specific helper
> > > > function so it happes on TARGET_I386 only.
> > >
> > > No, it's not pc-specific. An e1000 card on a PPC still has an x86 option
> > > rom. Whether it gets loaded and how it gets loaded depends on the
> > > target, but not the existence of the rom on the device.
> >
> > Yep, the *loading* is what I was referring to (see $subject) ...
>
> Well, I guess I'm confused about where we stand.

loading the rom is x86 specific ...

> Are you suggesting that we drop the pxe property and load the roms
> unconditionally?

Yes, I think we should do that (on x86), given BEV works nicely.
The e1000 rom needs fixing first of course ;)

> The tricky thing here is that we only want to load a
> particular rom once. There's no need to load the rtl8139 multiple times
> for multiple nics.

As hw/loader.c keeps track of the roms this should be easy to do.

The rom_add_option() macro in hw/loader.h should become a function which 
loads the rom on x86 and does nothing on other archs.  Then the nic 
drivers can simply call rom_add_option("pxe-${driver}.bin") unconditionally.

cheers,
  Gerd