> Oh, c'mon, Rob! I really didn't want to ask Paul Brook that, but > sure you'll fix my cluelessness right here, right now - tell me, tell me, > why Linux has dynamic-loadable modules support, which clueless passers-by > like me call "plugins"? It must be closed-source diversion, no?
Linux has genuine reasons for wanting modules. Kernel size is important because (a) it has to be loaded by the bootloader, often from a small, slow device (eg. floppy, flash or network). (b) The whole kernel is permanently locked into ram. It you've ever tried to build a kernel with everything enable you'll know the result is unreasonably large. Modules allow the same kernel to work on a wide variety of large and small machines. It's also a fairly convenient way of allowing userspace to disable a particular set of drivers. Closed source kernel modules are explicitly *not* supported by kernel developers. A typical qemu process already uses well over a hundred Mb of memory. Saving a few hundred k of code at runtime isn't going to make any difference to anything. Paul _______________________________________________ Qemu-devel mailing list Qemu-devel@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
