Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v11 0/8] Add a generic loader

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 22/09/2016 11:19, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> > I think -device is okay for something that isn't a "backend" but is
>> > directly guest-visible.
> Well, the contents of a block device is just as guest-visible.  We split
> the device in a frontend and a backend, and the contents comes from the
> backend.
> 
> We traditionally don't model memory as a split device.  Perhaps we
> should.  Regardless of whether we actually do, "contents of a memory
> device that you need to create by some other means (explicit or
> implicit)" feels much more like -object than like -device to me.

The closest precedents here are "-bios" (not an object at all), PCI ROMs
(a property points to the file), and "-pflash" (split into backend and
frontend, the frontend being a device).

I think there is a device concept in here, the question is whether you
want to split the backend and frontend.  For read-only data the
precedents favor not splitting it.

Paolo