[libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Supporting hypervisor specific APIs in libvirt

[Markus Armbruster]

Paul Brook <paul at codesourcery.com> writes:

>> > IMO the no_user flag is a bug, and should not exist.
>> 
>> Sorry, what's that?
>
> Usually an indication that a device has been incorrectly or inproperly 
> converted to the qdev interface.

Can also be an indication that the device can't support multiple
instances.  For instance:

    commit 39a51dfda835a75c0ebbfd92705b96e4de77f795
    Author: Markus Armbruster <armbru at redhat.com>
    Date:   Tue Oct 27 13:52:13 2009 +0100

        qdev: Tag isa-fdc, PIIX3 IDE and PIIX4 IDE as no-user

        These devices are created automatically, and attempting to create
        another one with -device fails with "qemu: hardware error:
        register_ioport_write: invalid opaque".

        Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru at redhat.com>
        Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori <aliguori at us.ibm.com>

With no-user, we at least fail with a decent error message.

I don't think it's fair to demand that a qdev conversion must relax
restrictions that haven't otherwise bothered us to be correct and
proper.  We'll relax them if and when they bother us enough to make
somebody send a decent patch.

And yes, there are better ways to disallow multiple instances of a
device than declaring it no-user.  Patches welcome.