Re: qemu_plugin_insn_disas() versus -cpu

[Peter Maydell]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 at 16:41, Marc Hacin <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Le 31/03/2020 à 16:52, Peter Maydell a écrit :
> > On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 at 14:35, Marc Hacin <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> Isn't it possible for the translator to also build
> >> a string, disassembling of any guest instruction ? So as to be
> >> conformant with configure'd selected targets.
> >
> > This would be a fair bit of extra work: the structure of the
> > two pieces of code is similar in some ways but adding in
> > support for disassemble-to-string to the translator code
> > would be awkward. We use third party disassembly
> > libraries because we don't want to have to reinvent that
> > wheel, and the only thing we use a disassembler for is
> > tracing output for debug purposes, so it's not critical
> > if it doesn't correctly handle some insns on some targets.
>
> It is not solely for debug purposes now as it is part of an API
> available to TCG plugins.

I think in practice it is still a "best efforts only"
part of the API. (The disassembly is also available
via the QEMU monitor, so it's visible to users there
too.) We could perhaps document that it is not guaranteed
to be a fully comprehensive disassembly.

thanks
-- PMM