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
