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

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 12:59:13PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 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.

I can't help feeling this just creates a new upgrade burden for distros
for no obvious win.

Things have gone quite recently, but if we introduce next-generation
QEMU system emulator binary which is 100% QMP based, I think that would
be the ideal time to change naming convention to -x86

With regards,
Daniel
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