On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 07:01:53PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 25 July 2018 at 09:59, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> wrote:
> > From: Su Hang <suhang16@mails.ucas.ac.cn>
> >
> > This patch adds Intel Hexadecimal Object File format support to the
> > loader.  The file format specification is available here:
> > http://www.piclist.com/techref/fileext/hex/intel.htm
> >
> > This file format is often used with microcontrollers such as the
> > micro:bit, Arduino, STM32, etc.  Users expect to be able to run them
> > directly with qemu -kernel program.hex instead of converting to ELF or
> > binary.
> 
> I'm still not convinced we want to add another random
> special case only-works-on-one-architecture-and-some-boards
> feature to the -kernel command line option.
> 
> Adding it to the "generic loader" device might be more plausible?

I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the generic loader.

As a user -kernel <myfile> is easier than -device
loader,file=<myfile>,cpu-num=1.

Can you explain the advantage to moving hex file loading to the generic
loader?

Stefan