Re: [Qemu-devel] [maybe-for-2.0 0/2] hw/arm: Don't specify any default board

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

Il 25/03/2014 20:26, Peter Maydell ha scritto:
> Currently for both qemu-system-arm and qemu-system-aarch64
> the default board model if the user doesn't specify one
> is the 'integratorcp'. This is a totally arbitrary historical
> accident since it was the first board to be modelled.
> That board is now just one target among many for us, and
> is a very poor choice of default:
>  * it's an ancient board that is now only found in the
>    junkpiles of longtime ARM/Linux hackers, if at all
>  * it's an ARMv5 CPU, when most distros are now assuming ARMv7
>  * it's pretty much unmaintained in QEMU
>  * it doesn't even have versatilepb's advantage of supporting PCI
>
> Making it or any other board the default serves only to confuse
> people new to ARM who expect something more like the x86 monoculture,
> and try to run a Linux kernel built for some random devboard on
> QEMU's integratorcp model by mistake
>
> This series removes the is_default marker from integratorcp,
> to give users a nudge that they need to think about which board
> they want a QEMU model of.
>
> Since it's now more likely that users will hit it, patch 2
> improves the slightly cryptic error "No machine found." to
> align with the rather more helpful text produced if you ask
> -M no-such-machine.
>
> This is a little late in the 2.0 cycle, but on the other hand
> the patches themselves are trivially simple, and the only
> question really is if we want to do this. It does break
> backwards compatibility of command lines with anybody who
> is still really running integratorcp kernels and not bothering
> to specify "-M integratorcp". But 2.0 is a nice round number
> to do that, and I think we improve usability for people who
> don't realise that the default is wrong for 99%+ of users.
>
> Peter Maydell (2):
>   hw/arm: Stop specifying integratorcp as the default board
>   vl.c: Improve message when no default machine is found
>
>  hw/arm/integratorcp.c | 1 -
>  vl.c                  | 3 ++-
>  2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>

series

Reviewed-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>