Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH] Allow building without graphics support

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On 12/13/12 01:57, Scott Wood wrote:
> On 12/12/2012 01:52:29 AM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>> On 12/12/12 04:18, Scott Wood wrote:
>> > QEMU is sometimes used in embedded contexts, where graphical support
>> > is unnecessary.  The ability to turn off graphics support not only
>> > saves some space, but it eliminates the dependency on pixman.
>>
>> We have tons of hand-crafted pixel shuffeling code all over the place
>> which I want replace with pixman library calls.  It's a long road and
>> will take quite some time.
>>
>> I wanna have pixman as core service in qemu for that, not some optional
>> add-on.
> 
> Why?  Isn't modularity a good thing?  It can still be a core service for
> any part of QEMU that deals with graphics.

A pretty central data structure in qemu (DisplayState / DisplaySurface)
carries a pixman image, not some module which can easily be made
optional.  Just look at the tons of #ifdef'ery you have to do to get
this going.

> Another thing that is missing on the hardware I'm talking about is a
> hard drive, so overly large qemu binaries are also not fun.

Oh, using pixman will actually make the qemu binaries smaller as we can
replace code with library calls.

Independant of that: allow easily stripping down qemu by removing stuff
you don't want would be a nice (but non-trivial) project.

cheers,
  Gerd