Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] Deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 4/25/23 15:38, Thomas Huth wrote:
> - CPU types have different suffixes between the -x86_64 and -i386
>    variant (see TYPE_X86_CPU in cpu-qom.h) ... do we need to care
>    about this in the new qemu-system-i386 symlink run mode?
>
> - The code in target/i386/tcg/sysemu/smm_helper.c looks like it
>    maybe needs a runtime switch, too ... or is it ok to leave this
>    hard-coded to the x86_64 version?

Yes, it would have to switch based on the CPU's LM feature.

> Anyway, I'd like to get some feedback on this idea here... What
> do you think of the idea of getting rid of the qemu-system-i386
> binary this way in the future?

I wonder if we should take this a step further and rename 
qemu-system-x86_64 to qemu-system-x86!  Distros can if they wish create 
symlinks to both qemu-system-i386 and qemu-system-x86_64.

Then we would name the CPUs "foo-x86" and alias them to foo-x86_64 and, 
if they don't have LM set, to foo-i386 as well.

Paolo