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Re: [PATCH 4/4] docs: add an introduction to the system docs
From: |
Kashyap Chamarthy |
Subject: |
Re: [PATCH 4/4] docs: add an introduction to the system docs |
Date: |
Fri, 13 Jan 2023 16:09:05 +0100 |
On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 01:39:23PM +0000, Alex Bennée wrote:
> Drop the frankly misleading quickstart section for a more rounded
> introduction section. This new section gives an overview of the
> accelerators and high level introduction to some of the key features
> of the emulator. We also expand on a general form for a QEMU command
> line with a hopefully not too scary worked example of what this looks
> like.
Thank you for this improvement!
The rendered version you shared on IRC looks quite good already.
https://qemu-stsquad.readthedocs.io/en/docs-next/system/introduction.html
The only main comment I have is to use -blockdev (instead of '-drive')
for the examples of overriding default firmware further below. Two
reasons: consistency and IIUC, '-drive' is slated for deprecation in the
future.
Besides that, just a couple of small nits below, feel free to pick and
choose what you prefer :-)
> Signed-off-by: Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org>
> ---
[...]
> +Introduction
> +============
> +
> +Virtualisation Accelerators
> +---------------------------
> +
> +QEMU's system emulation provides a virtual model of a machine (CPU,
> +memory and emulated devices) to run a guest OS. It supports a number
> +of hypervisors (known as accelerators) as well as a dynamic JIT known
> +as the Tiny Code Generator (TCG) capable of emulating many CPUs.
Nit: might want to expand JIT as well (although if someone is reading
this page, they'd already know what it is). So up to you :-)
[...]
> +There is a full featured block layer allows for construction of
Nit: s/allows/that allows/
> +complex storage topology which can be stacked across multiple layers
> +supporting redirection, networking, snapshots and migration support.
Speaking of which, consider hyper-linking this doc:
https://qemu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/interop/live-block-operations.html
[...]
> +For the common accelerators QEMU supported debugging with its
> +:ref:`gdbstub<GDB usage>` which allows users to connect GDB and debug
> +system software images
Readability tweak for the first part of the sentence:
For the common accelerators, QEMU supports debugging with its [...]
> +Running
> +-------
[...]
> +While the project doesn't want to discourage users from using the
> +command line to launch VMs we do want to highlight there are a number
Nit: small tweak:
[...] to launch VMs, we do want to highlight that there are [...]
[...]
> +We then tell QEMU to multiplex the :ref:`QEMU monitor` with the serial
> +port output (we can switch between the two using :ref:`keys in the
> +character backend multiplexer`). As there is no default graphical
> +device we disable the display as we can work entirely in the terminal.
> +
> +.. code::
> +
> + -serial mon:stdio \
> + -display none \
Nice that you mention "-serial mon:stdio" which doesn't terminate QEMU
on Ctrl-c (while "-serial stdio" does :-)).
> +
> +Finally we override the default firmware to ensure we have have some
> +storage for EFI to persist its configuration. That firmware is
> +responsible for finding the disk, booting grub and eventually running
> +our system.
> +
> +.. code::
> +
> + -drive
> if=pflash,file=(pwd)/pc-bios/edk2-aarch64-code.fd,format=raw,readonly=on \
> + -drive if=pflash,file=$HOME/images/qemu-arm64-efivars,format=raw
Here, -blockdev. (I don't have a replacement invocation off-hand,
afraid.)
Regardless of whether these are addressed, this is a strict improvement:
Reviewed-by: Kashyap Chamarthy <kchamart@redhat.com>
[...]
--
/kashyap
- [PATCH 0/4] Improve the introductory documentation, Alex Bennée, 2023/01/13
- [PATCH 1/4] docs: add hotlinks to about preface text, Alex Bennée, 2023/01/13
- [PATCH 2/4] docs: add a new section to outline emulation support, Alex Bennée, 2023/01/13
- [PATCH 4/4] docs: add an introduction to the system docs, Alex Bennée, 2023/01/13
- [PATCH 3/4] semihosting: add semihosting section to the docs, Alex Bennée, 2023/01/13
- Re: [PATCH 0/4] Improve the introductory documentation, Richard Henderson, 2023/01/13