Jan Kiszka wrote: > On 2011-11-02 19:34, Alexander Graf wrote: > >> Anthony Liguori wrote: >> >>> On 11/02/2011 01:17 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote: >>> >>>> On 2011-11-02 18:44, Fabien Chouteau wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 31/10/2011 14:12, Peter Maydell wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> On 29 October 2011 14:52, Alexander Graf<ag...@suse.de> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> A lot of people seem to also have code that doesn't make sense >>>>>>> upstream, for example implementing a one-off device that only >>>>>>> really matters for their own devboard which nobody else owns. >>>>>>> For such cases, having a plugin framework would be handy. I >>>>>>> interestingly enough got into the same discussion on LinuxCon >>>>>>> with some QEMU downstreams. >>>>>>> >>>>>> If we get the qdev rework done then I think we're probably in >>>>>> a better position to have a plugin framework for devices. (There >>>>>> are some issues about API and ABI stability guarantees, of course.) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> Interesting, we have a "plug-in" implementation in our Qemu branch. It >>>>> >>>> We have a "plugin" model here as well. It's really simple: the plugin is >>>> loaded dynamically into the QEMU process and can access any global >>>> function and variable. Of course, this breaks regularly. >>>> >>> Yes, this is the Right Model. >>> >>> All of the work is in making the interfaces not break regularly. >>> Loading a shared object is easy enough. >>> >> I agree. In fact, we could even do it the same way as the kernel and >> build all our internal hw pieces as shared objects. >> >> Then users who want to cut down QEMU can just remove .so files instead >> of messing with the build system or code. >> > > We should also be able to establish an EXPORT_SYMBOL concept, ie. only > export those functions that are supposed to be part of a component API. > Will be some work initially, but should be off long term, both to QEMU > in maintaining stable APIs and to external components in using the > proper ones. >
Yes. IOW, let's go down the same road as Linux. It works well for them, why not for us? Alex
