Re: [Qemu-devel] [6064] Implement device tree support needed for Bamboo emulation

[Paul Brook]

On Tuesday 16 December 2008, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> > If you'd prefer to make libfdt mandatory, I'm fine with that.
>
> No, it shouldn't be mandatory :-)
>
> >>> This patch introduces a dependency on libfdt for flat device tree
> >>> support.
> >>
> >> I don't like the way this is done.
> >>
> >> AFAIK libfdt isn't present in any of the major distros. I thought the
> >> conclusion was that we should import libfdt into qemu.
> >
> > That was our conclusion, but Anthony never agreed.
>
> Because it's better to let the distros maintain this.   That way, they
> can deal with security issues, etc.

That's fine in theory. In practice it means we can't realistically use libfdt 
for anything important for at least another 12 months or so. I'm also rather 
sceptical about the stability of the libfdt API.

> > FWIW, I have requested that Fedora and Debian package libfdt, and they
> > agreed in principle, but it's still missing in Fedora 10 for example.
>
> As long as it's heading toward distros, it should be fine.  If we decide
> to use libfdt for core QEMU functionality (like config file), we should
> revisit this though.

That's likely to happen fairly soon. And IIUC it's already fairly critical for 
the new PPC boards.

Paul