[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH 0/4][RFC] Add module infrastructure to QEMU

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

> > I'm not convinced virtio is as much of a separate entity as you think it
> > is. It's certainly not a bus. It's an implementation detail that happens
> > to be shared by several devices.
>
> It is once you abstract out the transport API from the transport
> implementation.  We fall short here in QEMU today mainly for better
> integration with how machines are created today.  I'd like to refactor
> the QEMU virtio code though to be closer to the Linux side of things.  I
> see a module mechanism like this as a prereq for doing such a refactoring.

I think it's only a prerequisite if you want a single "virtio" device that 
then magically morphs into a specific device based on its config.  In 
practice I don't think this is really useful, and the virtio init is driven 
directly from the host binding. i.e. you have separate virtio-net-pci, 
virtio-blk-pci, virtio-net-s390, etc. devices in the same way that other pci 
devices are top level entities.

I've already got a patch I'm hoping to push out soon that implements a 
different virtio binding.

Paul