From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:40932) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RLBEF-0001wL-CN for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:06:03 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RLBE8-0000Wd-Sl for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:05:59 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:15236) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RLBE8-0000WL-DK for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:05:52 -0400 Message-ID: <4EAFC479.1090601@redhat.com> Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:05:45 +0100 From: Gerd Hoffmann MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4639B135-B96A-43A0-B4FA-6DDCBE3FBA92@suse.de> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] GSoC mentor summit QEMU users session List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Peter Maydell Cc: Alexander Graf , "qemu-devel@nongnu.org Developers" Hi, > If we get the qdev rework done then I think we're probably in > a better position to have a plugin framework for devices. (There > are some issues about API and ABI stability guarantees, of course.) One of the qdev intended benefits is to have pretty much self-contained device emulation. If doesn't work equally well everythere. For alot of -- for example -- PCI devices it does work nicely though. Adding a device is simply a matter of dropping a file into the tree and a line into the Makefile and you are done. The device is available to be used via -device. So the cost of maintaining stuff out-of-tree isn't that big as you almost never have patch conflict issues. For embedded stuff it is usually a bit trickier as the device interconnects are hard-coded in the board creation bits and devices can't be hooked up using -device (or some other generic mechanism which uses -- say -- device trees) ... cheers, Gerd