From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1GckGW-00013n-1l for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:02:00 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1GckGR-00011O-B7 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:01:59 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GckGR-00011I-8R for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:01:55 -0400 Received: from [65.74.133.4] (helo=mail.codesourcery.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA:32) (Exim 4.52) id 1GckGQ-0008My-La for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:01:54 -0400 From: Paul Brook Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Config file support Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:01:48 +0100 References: <200610241928.47477.rob@landley.net> <557987790.20061025031831@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <557987790.20061025031831@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200610251601.50491.paul@codesourcery.com> Reply-To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Paul Sokolovsky > Oh, c'mon, Rob! I really didn't want to ask Paul Brook that, but > sure you'll fix my cluelessness right here, right now - tell me, tell me, > why Linux has dynamic-loadable modules support, which clueless passers-by > like me call "plugins"? It must be closed-source diversion, no? Linux has genuine reasons for wanting modules. Kernel size is important because (a) it has to be loaded by the bootloader, often from a small, slow device (eg. floppy, flash or network). (b) The whole kernel is permanently locked into ram. It you've ever tried to build a kernel with everything enable you'll know the result is unreasonably large. Modules allow the same kernel to work on a wide variety of large and small machines. It's also a fairly convenient way of allowing userspace to disable a particular set of drivers. Closed source kernel modules are explicitly *not* supported by kernel developers. A typical qemu process already uses well over a hundred Mb of memory. Saving a few hundred k of code at runtime isn't going to make any difference to anything. Paul