Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] null-machine: Add support for the "-kernel" parameter

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On 27 February 2017 at 17:57, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> And I still think it does not really make sense to introduce a
> per-architecture hook here - let me cite my reply to Peter's mail a
> couple of mails later in that e-mail thread:
>
> 'The -kernel parameter is not just only dependent on the target
> architecture, it is even dependent on the machine type, e.g. on ppc it
> is quite different between embedded (e500.c) and server (spapr.c)
> variants. So an arch-specific hook might not make too much sense and
> using the generic loader is likely the best we can do - if that does not
> work, you likely can't use the "none" machine anyway.'
>
> So as far as I can see, we should either go with the generic loader
> here, or print out an error message if the user tries to run QEMU with
> the "-kernel" parameter.

I would go for "don't support -kernel". The fundamental problem
with -kernel is that it tries to be a magic "do what I mean"
command line argument. Adding extra magic is going to make things
worse, not better.

thanks
-- PMM