Re: [Qemu-devel] [RESEND][PATCH v3] Generalize -machine command line option

[Alexander Graf]

On 25.07.2011, at 14:05, Peter Maydell wrote:

> On 25 July 2011 12:48, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
>> For ARM you absolutely should not be relying on the default
>> machine type (not least because it's an incredibly ancient
>> dev board which nobody uses any more). An ARM kernel is
>> generally fairly specific to the hardware platform being
>> emulated, so you should know which machine you're intending
>> to run on and specify it explicitly.
> 
> In fact having thought about it a bit I'm going to go further
> and say that the whole idea of a "default machine" is a rather
> x86-centric idea -- most architectures don't really have a
> single machine type that's used by just about everybody,
> always has been, and isn't likely to become obsolete in the
> future. So if we're reworking the command line API to
> supersede "-M" then we shouldn't have a default at all.

That's not exactly true. For PPC, everyone so far expects a Mac to pop up. For 
S390x, we only have a single machine implemented. I think having a default 
makes it easier for users to run something you give to them - if it runs on the 
default target.

> (Consider also the possibility of eventually having a single
> qemu binary that supports multiple architectures -- that
> would make a 'default machine' definitely a bit odd.)

It would be a different machine depending on the emulated target.


Alex