Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] qom: Introduce object_realize_nofail()

[Anthony Liguori]

On 04/12/2012 10:52 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 12 April 2012 16:43, Anthony Liguori<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > I don't think machines should be objects.
> >
> > Chipsets should be QOM objects.  What the machines currently do does not map
> > well to modeling as an object.
>
> Why would you design an infrastructure that lets you coherently bundle
> together a collection of devices and have configurable properties on
> that bundle as well as on the devices, and then *not* use it for machines?

The machine concept in QEMU is "broken" IMHO.  If we want to maintain 
compatibility (and we do), we need to let machines act as a bridge.

Here's how I expect the PC to work:

qemu --no-machine -readconfig my-system.cfg

[device "root"]
driver=i440fx
cpu[0]=cpu0
slot[3]=e1000
memory=2G
biosname=bios.bin

[device "cpu0"]
driver=qemu64

[device "e1000"]
bus=/i440fx
netdev=eth0

[netdev "eth0"]
type=tap

...

There is no real need to have a '-machine' option and no need to model a 
machine.

-M pc ends up being a compatibility bridge which takes a bunch of options that 
really do lots of different things (like choosing network device models).  I see 
machines as a function that takes a QemuOpts and then does the equivalent of the 
above.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori