Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Deprecate/rename singlestep command line option

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 07/02/2023 12.01, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Feb 2023 at 20:18, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 06/02/2023 18.13, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>> The command line option '-singlestep' and its HMP equivalent
>>> the 'singlestep' command are very confusingly named, because
>>> they have nothing to do with single-stepping the guest (either
>>> via the gdb stub or by emulation of guest CPU architectural
>>> debug facilities). What they actually do is put TCG into a
>>> mode where it puts only one guest instruction into each
>>> translation block. This is useful for some circumstances
>>> such as when you want the -d debug logging to be easier to
>>> interpret, or if you have a finicky guest binary that wants
>>> to see interrupts delivered at something other than the end
>>> of a basic block.
>>>
>>> The confusing name is made worse by the fact that our
>>> documentation for these is so minimal as to be useless
>>> for telling users what they really do.
>>>
>>> This series:
>>>    * renames the 'singlestep' global variable to 'one_insn_per_tb'
>>>    * Adds new '-one-insn-per-tb' command line options and a
>>
>> Please no new "top level" command line options like this! It's related to
>> TCG, so this should IMHO become a parameter of the "-accel tcg" option.
> 
> That makes sense (and is probably an argument for taking
> the deprecate-and-drop step). Is there an equivalent to
> "accel suboptions" for HMP commands, or does that just
> stay a top-level command ?

I'm not aware of an "accel" HMP command, so I guess it has to stay top 
level. Or you could introduce a new "accel" command now, so we have 
something we can use in the future for other related HMP commands, too?

> (For the user-mode binaries it'll stay a top level option
> because those are all we have there.)

Ack, that's right.

  Thomas