Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Split machine creation from the main loop

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 02/23/2011 05:00 PM, Juan Quintela wrote:
> Anthony Liguori<aliguori@us.ibm.com>  wrote:
>    
>> The goal is to enable the monitor to run independently of whether the machine
>> has been created such that the monitor can be used to specify all of the
>> parameters for machine initialization.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori<aliguori@us.ibm.com>
>>      
> I agree that it is one step in the right direction, but we are still
> calling qemu_machine_init() before calling the main_loop().
>
> What is the plan from here?
>    

1) Decouple QMP from qemu_machine_init().  This really requires the 
introduction of the new QAPI server that exists outside of the chardev 
infrastructure since chardevs are currently initialized in 
qemu_machine_init().

2) Make qemu_machine_init() take no parameters and just reference global 
state.

3) Teach all QMP functions to behave themselves if called before 
qemu_machine_init()

4) Introduce QMP function to call qemu_machine_init()

5) Introduce new command line flag to not automatically call 
qemu_machine_init()

6) Convert all command line options to just be QMP function calls

(6) can be started right now.  (1) comes with the QAPI merge.  (2) is 
pretty easy to do after applying this patch.  (3) is probably something 
that can be done shortly after (1).  (4) and (5) really require 
everything but (6) to be in place before we can meaningful do it.

I think we can lay out much of the ground work for this in 0.15 and I 
think we can have a total conversion realistically for 0.16.  That means 
that by EOY, we could invoke QEMU with no options and do everything 
through QMP.

Somewhere in all of this, we need to fit in a stateful (non-)config file 
too IMHO.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Later, Juan.
>
>