Re: [PATCH 05/22] hw/arm: Select VIRTIO_NET for virt machine

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 5/9/23 12:00, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Tue, 9 May 2023 at 10:42, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On 5/9/23 11:27, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > > On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 23:24, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > --without-default-devices is not about choosing to not build
> > > > some devices; it is about making non-selected devices opt-in
> > > > rather than opt-out.
> > >
> > > Hmm, so it's basically "the person doing the configuration needs
> > > to know what they're doing, the Kconfig system will give them
> > > no hints about what devices might or might not be needed to
> > > make machine type M functional" ?
> >
> > It depends on what you mean by functional.  I would say you do get what
> > is needed to have a functional machine, but not what is needed to have a
> > useful machine.
>
> If you need to pass '-nodefaults' to get the thing to start up at
> all, that seems to be stretching the definition of "functional"
> to me.

Then, an accurate description that uses "functional" in that sense could 
be as follows:

The Kconfig system will include any devices and subsystems that are 
mandatory for a given machine type, and will flag any configuration 
conflicts. However, the person doing the configuration still needs to 
know which devices are needed (on top of the mandatory ones) to obtain a 
functional guest, and Kconfig will not provide any hints in this respect.

Paolo