Since I think Nate is occupied right now, I grepped for .m5 and found
what I think you're talking about in src/python/m5/coinfig.py. It looks
like it's basically a folder you can put in your home directory where M5
will automatically look for config files. We could roll that into this
too, actually.

Gabe

On 02/21/11 14:56, Ali Saidi wrote:
> Nate,
>
> Didn't you create a .m5 config file to do some of this at one point?
>
> Ali
>
> On Feb 21, 2011, at 4:40 PM, Gabe Black wrote:
>
>> As far as actual changes to the way paths are resolved, I was thinking
>> the following.
>>
>> Right now, the directories in M5_PATH (or the defaults) are walked
>> through one at a time, and if one exists it becomes system.dir. When the
>> path for a disk image, etc., is needed, it's formed by taking that path,
>> appending 'disks' or 'binaries' or 'boot' to it, and then the file name.
>>
>> What I'd like to do is make M5_PATH searched each time to find if a
>> particular file exists, not just the directory. Also, I want to have a
>> list of sub paths that extend M5_PATH. The sub paths would be tried one
>> at a time by appending them to the entries in M5_PATH one at a time,
>> stopping at the first match. The sub paths would be configured, using a
>> utility function, to look in the right directories in the right order
>> for ISA specific, variant specific, and ISA/variant specific files.
>>
>> So for instance, if you were to specify 32 bit linux on x86 as the
>> variant and ISA, the sub paths might be 'x86/linux32', 'x86', 'linux32'.
>> If M5_PATH was '/home/gblack/:/dist/m5/', the path search order would be:
>>
>> /home/gblack/x86/linux32
>> /dist/m5/x86/linux32
>> /home/gblack/x86
>> /dist/m5/x86
>> /home/gblack/linux32
>> /dist/m5/linux32
>>
>> The ordering is designed so that the ordering of sub paths is stronger,
>> ie if a file exists in x86/linux32 anywhere, it always takes precedence
>> over something in just x86. That's because placement in the subpaths is
>> assumed to be functionally meaningful and necessary. Then M5_PATH is
>> considered so you can have files in different places. If a school, for
>> instance, put a bunch of disk images or kernels or whatever in a shared
>> directory, a student could use that and then also have their own
>> collection of stuff to overlay it.
>>
>> The reason I like sub paths instead of having a fixed set of
>> subdirectories to look in is that the underlying system is more flexible
>> if we decide later to change some of the higher level semantics. If, for
>> instance, we decided to go with linux and 32 instead of linux32, then
>> we'd just have to change the sub path list. We could even do that on a
>> case by case basis in the consuming scripts.
>>
>> One other thing to mention is that I do like having a "binaries",
>> "system", etc. directory for the different types of files. Those need to
>> be folded in someplace, likely between the path and sub path.
>>
>> Let me know what you guys think. This would all be part of a second pass
>> once I do the clean up I mentioned in my earlier email.
>>
>> Gabe
>>
>> On 02/21/11 03:36, Gabe Black wrote:
>>> Hi folks. I said a while ago I intended to change how various files
>>> needed by M5 were located, and this weekend I started looking into
>>> actually doing that. The first thing I think I'm going to do is keep the
>>> end behavior basically the same but adjust how SysPaths.py works to make
>>> it more amenable to the what I want to do and to clean it up a bit.
>>> Looking at what it does now, there are two paths that are used if the
>>> M5_PATH environment variable isn't set, "/dist/m5/system" and
>>> "/n/poolfs/z/dist/m5/system".
>>>
>>> The later of these is obviously to make running things on the cluster at
>>> UM easier, and isn't useful to anyone not in a position to do that (or
>>> even some of us who are). I propose we eliminate that path outright and
>>> adjust any scripts that, for instance, run the regressions to set
>>> M5_PATH explicitly.
>>>
>>> The former path I'm less sure about. We've always had stuff in /dist
>>> since I've been involved with M5 and I've always just taken it for
>>> granted, but where did that actually come from? Why do we put things
>>> there? I've started digging around various interpretations of what a
>>> Linux file system should look like trying to find a more standard
>>> location, but I haven't found anything that's obviously the right place.
>>> I've seen no mention of /dist, though, so it seems even more odd now. Is
>>> /dist something we could reasonably expect people to already have or to
>>> not be too put out to create? Or do we want to pick somewhere less unusual?
>>>
>>> Gabe
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