From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L8fGx-0007ZK-NH for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:19:27 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L8fGw-0007Yv-SB for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:19:27 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=46159 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1L8fGw-0007Ys-Ob for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:19:26 -0500 Received: from mx2.redhat.com ([66.187.237.31]:37239) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1L8fGw-0005MH-1B for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:19:26 -0500 Received: from int-mx2.corp.redhat.com (int-mx2.corp.redhat.com [172.16.27.26]) by mx2.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id mB5IJPef001622 for ; Fri, 5 Dec 2008 13:19:25 -0500 Message-ID: <493970B9.3060807@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:19:37 +0200 From: Avi Kivity MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Modular qemu? References: <3056442136ca43729c6a2aec02c038aa.squirrel@www.boonen.name> <49393B8D.40209@codemonkey.ws> In-Reply-To: <49393B8D.40209@codemonkey.ws> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 Anthony Liguori wrote: > Plugins are not the solution though. What about non-plugin dlopen()? Right now building qemu (with all options enabled) requires a large amount of libraries, hence a lot of dependencies. For example, a server setup that will only be used with -vnc needs to have SDL installed. This will only get worse with opengl support. I'm thinking of something similar to linux kernel modules: no backward compatible ABI, simply load-on-demand functionality that can be packaged separately to reduce dependencies. With kvm integrated, we could even make the cpu emulator an optional loadable module. -- I have a truly marvellous patch that fixes the bug which this signature is too narrow to contain.