From: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
To: QEMU Developers <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
Cc: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>,
"Paolo Bonzini" <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>,
"Stefano Garzarella" <sgarzare@redhat.com>,
"Michael Roth" <michael.roth@amd.com>,
"Konstantin Kostiuk" <kkostiuk@redhat.com>,
"Alex Bennée" <alex.bennee@linaro.org>,
"Pierrick Bouvier" <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org>,
"Eric Blake" <eblake@redhat.com>
Subject: Cleaning up contrib/ and tools/
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:09:33 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAFEAcA_5HvGriDsWnb1ALuA_dgG320eKv7yuM2kThv=rfOSZQA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
We have a couple of directories in our source tree which have
accumulated things in them that don't really belong there; this is a
proposal to clean up by moving things to more appropriate locations
(as 11.1 work, obviously).
Firstly, contrib/ has a tendency to be a dumping ground for stuff that
we didn't think hard enough about finding a good home for, and for
things in a weird "not really maintained" state. We should either
(a) care enough about something to give it a correct home and to
maintain it, or (b) not care about it, and kick it out of our tree.
Secondly, tools/ exists but is very under-used. I think it should be
for the set of standalone tools that we build if you configure
--enable-tools and which we document in docs/tools. Currently it
contains two things, one of which doesn't match that idea...
So, starting with tools/:
* tools/ebpf/ is the source for the pre-generated
ebpf/rss.bpf.skeleton.h ; it should move to ebpf/
* tools/i386/qemu-vmsr-helper.c is the source for the
qemu-vmsr-helper tool; it can stay (should it lose its
i386/ subdir ?)
* the tools which currently are in the top level directory
should move into tools/:
- qemu-bridge-helper.c
- qemu-edid.c
- qemu-img.c
- qemu-io.c
- qemu-keymap.c
- qemu-nbd.c
And for contrib/, easy ones first:
* contrib/vhost-user-{blk,bridge,gpu,input,scsi} move to tools/
* contrib/elf2dmp moves to tools/
* contrib/ivshmem-client and contrib/ivshmem-server move to tools/
* contrib/plugins moves to plugins/plugins (or a different subdir
name of your choice)
For contrib/, ones I'm less sure about:
* contrib/vmapple/uuid.sh is a one-liner; we should either commit to
having this, by giving it a better name and documentation and
installing it in 'make install', or else junk it and have
docs/system/arm/vmapple.rst give you the plutil command and tell
you to run it directly.
* contrib/gitdm moves to scripts/ ? It's just config data for
generating statistics about patches, so with other
developer-related stuff makes sense.
* contrib/systemd -- we don't do anything with these (e.g.
'make install' ignores them), so I am sceptical about their
usefulness. We could drop them, or move them to scripts/, or put
them in tools/ and qga/ with the tools that they are systemd
scripts for.
Then we can delete contrib/ entirely.
(scripts/ is also in danger of being "miscellaneous dumping
ground", of course. I have tried not to suggest it as the
destination when I could think of an alternative.)
-- PMM
next reply other threads:[~2026-03-24 17:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-03-24 17:09 Peter Maydell [this message]
2026-03-24 17:31 ` Cleaning up contrib/ and tools/ Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-24 18:28 ` Pierrick Bouvier
2026-03-24 18:33 ` Peter Maydell
2026-03-24 18:44 ` Pierrick Bouvier
2026-03-25 9:21 ` Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-25 10:05 ` Marc-André Lureau
2026-03-25 11:11 ` Alex Bennée
2026-03-25 15:17 ` Pierrick Bouvier
2026-03-25 16:43 ` Peter Maydell
2026-03-25 7:42 ` Kostiantyn Kostiuk
2026-03-25 11:43 ` Markus Armbruster
2026-03-25 14:32 ` Alex Bennée
2026-03-25 16:49 ` Peter Maydell
2026-03-25 16:54 ` Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-25 19:41 ` Peter Maydell
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