Re: TCG Plugin Dynamic Load

[Peter Maydell]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 at 16:12, Stephen Bates via <qemu-discuss@nongnu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I am exploring the rather awesome TCG Plugin feature of QEMU 
> (https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/devel/tcg-plugins.html#). The latest 
> documentation for this feature states:
>
> "This is a new feature for QEMU and it does allow people to develop 
> out-of-tree plugins that can be dynamically linked into a running QEMU 
> process".
>
> However all the examples given on the documentation page show cases where the 
> plugin is loaded at QEMU invocation time. Is there any documentation or 
> associated material that discusses how a plugin can be dynamically linked 
> into a running QEMU process? I would very much like to be able to experiment 
> with this capability. Also, if so, is there a way to unlink the plugin from 
> the running process if needed?

I think when that document says "dynamically linking into a running
QEMU process" what it means is exactly "loaded at invocation time":
at the point when QEMU is processing the command line options it is
already running. The idea is that this is a contrast from "you needed
to compile this into QEMU when you built the QEMU binary", i.e.
statically linked.

Cc'd Alex to check whether I'm right.

thanks
-- PMM