From: "Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>
To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org
Cc: "Markus Armbruster" <armbru@redhat.com>,
"Richard Henderson" <richard.henderson@linaro.org>,
"Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@linaro.org>,
devel@lists.libvirt.org, qemu-rust@nongnu.org,
"Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dave@treblig.org>,
"Gerd Hoffmann" <kraxel@redhat.com>,
"Christian Schoenebeck" <qemu_oss@crudebyte.com>,
"Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>,
"Marc-André Lureau" <marcandre.lureau@redhat.com>,
"Manos Pitsidianakis" <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org>,
"Eduardo Habkost" <eduardo@habkost.net>,
"Pierrick Bouvier" <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org>,
"Paolo Bonzini" <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
"Stefan Weil" <sw@weilnetz.de>
Subject: [PULL 09/27] system: unconditionally enable thread naming
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2026 17:47:25 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260305174743.3084606-10-berrange@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260305174743.3084606-1-berrange@redhat.com>
When thread naming was introduced years ago, it was disabled by
default and put behind a command line flag:
commit 8f480de0c91a18d550721f8d9af969ebfbda0793
Author: Dr. David Alan Gilbert <dgilbert@redhat.com>
Date: Thu Jan 30 10:20:31 2014 +0000
Add 'debug-threads' suboption to --name
This was done based on a concern that something might depend
on the historical thread naming. Thread names, however, were
never promised to be part of QEMU's public API. The defaults
will vary across platforms, so no assumptions should ever be
made about naming.
An opt-in behaviour is also unfortunately incompatible with
RCU which creates its thread from an constructor function
which is run before command line args are parsed. Thus the
RCU thread lacks any name.
libvirt has unconditionally enabled debug-threads=yes on all
VMs it creates for 10 years. Interestingly this DID expose a
bug in libvirt, as it parsed /proc/$PID/stat and could not
cope with a space in the thread name. This was a latent
pre-existing bug in libvirt though, and not a part of QEMU's
API.
Having thread names always available, will allow thread names
to be included in error reports and log messags QEMU prints
by default, which will improve ability to triage QEMU bugs.
Reviewed-by: Dr. David Alan Gilbert <dave@treblig.org>
Reviewed-by: Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
---
docs/about/deprecated.rst | 7 +++++++
include/qemu/thread.h | 1 -
system/vl.c | 12 +++++++-----
util/qemu-thread-posix.c | 18 +-----------------
util/qemu-thread-win32.c | 27 ++++++---------------------
5 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 44 deletions(-)
diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index d0ce914d85..576f82a256 100644
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -54,6 +54,13 @@ as short-form boolean values, and passed to plugins as ``arg_name=on``.
However, short-form booleans are deprecated and full explicit ``arg_name=on``
form is preferred.
+``debug-threads`` option for ``-name`` (since 11.0)
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+The ``debug-threads`` option of the ``-name`` argument is now
+ignored. Thread naming is unconditionally enabled for all platforms
+where it is supported.
+
QEMU Machine Protocol (QMP) commands
------------------------------------
diff --git a/include/qemu/thread.h b/include/qemu/thread.h
index f0302ed01f..3a286bb3ef 100644
--- a/include/qemu/thread.h
+++ b/include/qemu/thread.h
@@ -215,7 +215,6 @@ void *qemu_thread_join(QemuThread *thread);
void qemu_thread_get_self(QemuThread *thread);
bool qemu_thread_is_self(QemuThread *thread);
G_NORETURN void qemu_thread_exit(void *retval);
-void qemu_thread_naming(bool enable);
struct Notifier;
/**
diff --git a/system/vl.c b/system/vl.c
index 3e341142a0..38d7b849e0 100644
--- a/system/vl.c
+++ b/system/vl.c
@@ -403,9 +403,8 @@ static QemuOptsList qemu_name_opts = {
}, {
.name = "debug-threads",
.type = QEMU_OPT_BOOL,
- .help = "When enabled, name the individual threads; defaults off.\n"
- "NOTE: The thread names are for debugging and not a\n"
- "stable API.",
+ .help = "Enable thread names"
+ "(deprecated, always enabled where supported)",
},
{ /* End of list */ }
},
@@ -554,9 +553,12 @@ static int parse_name(void *opaque, QemuOpts *opts, Error **errp)
{
const char *proc_name;
- if (qemu_opt_get(opts, "debug-threads")) {
- qemu_thread_naming(qemu_opt_get_bool(opts, "debug-threads", false));
+ if (qemu_opt_get(opts, "debug-threads") &&
+ !qemu_opt_get_bool(opts, "debug-threads", false)) {
+ fprintf(stderr, "Ignoring deprecated 'debug-threads=no' option, " \
+ "thread naming is unconditionally enabled\n");
}
+
qemu_name = qemu_opt_get(opts, "guest");
proc_name = qemu_opt_get(opts, "process");
diff --git a/util/qemu-thread-posix.c b/util/qemu-thread-posix.c
index ba725444ba..7c985b5d38 100644
--- a/util/qemu-thread-posix.c
+++ b/util/qemu-thread-posix.c
@@ -22,22 +22,6 @@
#include <pthread_np.h>
#endif
-static bool name_threads;
-
-void qemu_thread_naming(bool enable)
-{
- name_threads = enable;
-
-#if !defined CONFIG_PTHREAD_SETNAME_NP_W_TID && \
- !defined CONFIG_PTHREAD_SETNAME_NP_WO_TID && \
- !defined CONFIG_PTHREAD_SET_NAME_NP
- /* This is a debugging option, not fatal */
- if (enable) {
- fprintf(stderr, "qemu: thread naming not supported on this host\n");
- }
-#endif
-}
-
static void error_exit(int err, const char *msg)
{
fprintf(stderr, "qemu: %s: %s\n", msg, strerror(err));
@@ -361,7 +345,7 @@ static void *qemu_thread_start(void *args)
/* Attempt to set the threads name; note that this is for debug, so
* we're not going to fail if we can't set it.
*/
- if (name_threads && qemu_thread_args->name) {
+ if (qemu_thread_args->name) {
# if defined(CONFIG_PTHREAD_SETNAME_NP_W_TID)
pthread_setname_np(pthread_self(), qemu_thread_args->name);
# elif defined(CONFIG_PTHREAD_SETNAME_NP_WO_TID)
diff --git a/util/qemu-thread-win32.c b/util/qemu-thread-win32.c
index ca2e0b512e..9595a5b090 100644
--- a/util/qemu-thread-win32.c
+++ b/util/qemu-thread-win32.c
@@ -17,8 +17,6 @@
#include "qemu-thread-common.h"
#include <process.h>
-static bool name_threads;
-
typedef HRESULT (WINAPI *pSetThreadDescription) (HANDLE hThread,
PCWSTR lpThreadDescription);
static pSetThreadDescription SetThreadDescriptionFunc;
@@ -44,16 +42,6 @@ static bool load_set_thread_description(void)
return !!SetThreadDescriptionFunc;
}
-void qemu_thread_naming(bool enable)
-{
- name_threads = enable;
-
- if (enable && !load_set_thread_description()) {
- fprintf(stderr, "qemu: thread naming not supported on this host\n");
- name_threads = false;
- }
-}
-
static void error_exit(int err, const char *msg)
{
char *pstr;
@@ -328,23 +316,20 @@ void *qemu_thread_join(QemuThread *thread)
return ret;
}
-static bool set_thread_description(HANDLE h, const char *name)
+static void set_thread_description(HANDLE h, const char *name)
{
- HRESULT hr;
g_autofree wchar_t *namew = NULL;
if (!load_set_thread_description()) {
- return false;
+ return;
}
namew = g_utf8_to_utf16(name, -1, NULL, NULL, NULL);
if (!namew) {
- return false;
+ return;
}
- hr = SetThreadDescriptionFunc(h, namew);
-
- return SUCCEEDED(hr);
+ SetThreadDescriptionFunc(h, namew);
}
void qemu_thread_create(QemuThread *thread, const char *name,
@@ -370,8 +355,8 @@ void qemu_thread_create(QemuThread *thread, const char *name,
if (!hThread) {
error_exit(GetLastError(), __func__);
}
- if (name_threads && name && !set_thread_description(hThread, name)) {
- fprintf(stderr, "qemu: failed to set thread description: %s\n", name);
+ if (name) {
+ set_thread_description(hThread, name);
}
CloseHandle(hThread);
--
2.53.0
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-03-05 17:50 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 30+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-03-05 17:47 [PULL v2 00/27] Misc patches queue Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 01/27] scripts: detect another GPL license boilerplate variant Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 02/27] io: separate freeing of tasks from marking them as complete Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 03/27] io: fix cleanup for TLS I/O source data on cancellation Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 04/27] io: fix cleanup for websock " Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 05/27] docs: simplify DiamondRapids CPU docs Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 06/27] qemu-options: remove extraneous [] around arg values Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 07/27] include: define constant for early constructor priority Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 08/27] monitor: initialize global data from a constructor Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` Daniel P. Berrangé [this message]
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 10/27] util: fix race setting thread name on Win32 Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 11/27] util: expose qemu_thread_set_name Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 12/27] audio: make jackaudio use qemu_thread_set_name Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-07 11:37 ` Philippe Mathieu-Daudé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 13/27] util: set the name for the 'main' thread on Windows Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 14/27] util: add API to fetch the current thread name Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 15/27] util: introduce some API docs for logging APIs Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 16/27] util: avoid repeated prefix on incremental qemu_log calls Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 17/27] util/log: add missing error reporting in qemu_log_trylock_with_err Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 18/27] ui: add proper error reporting for password changes Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 19/27] ui: remove redundant use of error_printf_unless_qmp() Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 20/27] monitor: remove redundant error_[v]printf_unless_qmp Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 21/27] monitor: refactor error_vprintf() Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 22/27] monitor: move error_vprintf back to error-report.c Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 23/27] util: fix interleaving of error & trace output Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 24/27] util: don't skip error prefixes when QMP is active Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 25/27] util: fix interleaving of error prefixes Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 26/27] scripts/checkpatch: Fix MAINTAINERS update warning with --terse Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-05 17:47 ` [PULL 27/27] util/oslib-posix: increase memprealloc thread count to 32 Daniel P. Berrangé
2026-03-06 9:49 ` [PULL v2 00/27] Misc patches queue Peter Maydell
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