Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qemu-options.hx: Specify the units for -machine kvm_shadow_mem

[Markus Armbruster]

Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:

> The -machine kvm_shadow_mem option takes a size in bytes; say
> so explicitly in its documentation.
>
> Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <address@hidden>
> Reported-by: Tobi (github.com/tobimensch)
> ---
>  qemu-options.hx | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/qemu-options.hx b/qemu-options.hx
> index 6106520..0b86d9f 100644
> --- a/qemu-options.hx
> +++ b/qemu-options.hx
> @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ DEF("machine", HAS_ARG, QEMU_OPTION_machine, \
>      "                kernel_irqchip=on|off controls accelerated irqchip 
> support\n"
>      "                kernel_irqchip=on|off|split controls accelerated 
> irqchip support (default=off)\n"
>      "                vmport=on|off|auto controls emulation of vmport 
> (default: auto)\n"
> -    "                kvm_shadow_mem=size of KVM shadow MMU\n"
> +    "                kvm_shadow_mem=size of KVM shadow MMU in bytes\n"
>      "                dump-guest-core=on|off include guest memory in a core 
> dump (default=on)\n"
>      "                mem-merge=on|off controls memory merge support 
> (default: on)\n"
>      "                iommu=on|off controls emulated Intel IOMMU (VT-d) 
> support (default=off)\n"

Won't hurt, but makes me wonder: we have several size-valued option
parameters where we don't bother to clarify the unit in the description.
Sometimes the param=value string gives a hint, e.g. sndbuf=nbytes.

Things would be less confusing if the suffixless unit of a size was the
same everywhere, but we've screwed that up pretty comprehensively.