Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 06/47] hw/alpha/Makefile.objs: Build objects depending on CLIPPER

[Paolo Bonzini]

Il 26/08/2013 19:30, Richard Henderson ha scritto:
> This isn't the kernel, where non-pagable code size is a concern, so I don't 
> see
> how full configuration of machine emulations and devices is helpful.  I'd be
> more inclined to go the other way, where all qemu-system-cpu images always
> build in all devices (compiled once of course).

This is useful for different usecases.  One is QEMU that is bundled into
development platform such as the Android emulator.  Making it easier to
build limited versions of QEMU is one small step towards encouraging
working in-tree instead of having out-of-tree patches which quickly
become forks.

The second is in distros that only want to distribute the subset of
features that are going to be supported (aka RHEL).  This includes both
devices (all of PCI, ISA, USB) and boards (-M isapc is removed nowadays,
perhaps one day goldfish or similar will be available too; for ARM and
PPC we surely would want to compile out almost all the boards).

The third is that in the future some of the devices could be compiled as
modules, too.  This would help the "other" set of distros, those that
include everything.  QEMU now has an insane set of dependencies, and
having modules for e.g. SPICE or RBD or Gluster would help making them
optional.

Paolo