aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/docs/about
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorAlex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org>2024-09-16 09:53:43 +0100
committerAlex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org>2024-09-19 15:58:01 +0100
commitcf2a78cbbb463d5716da9805c8fc5758937924d8 (patch)
tree7858480ab07b834a822e27d514f1069f5a390ee5 /docs/about
parent14556211bc6d7125a44d5b5df90caba019b0ec0e (diff)
deprecation: don't enable TCG plugins by default on 32 bit hosts
The existing plugins already liberally use host pointer stuffing for passing user data which will fail when doing 64 bit guests on 32 bit hosts. We should discourage this by officially deprecating support and adding another nail to the 32 bit host coffin. Reviewed-by: Pierrick Bouvier <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org> Signed-off-by: Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org> Message-Id: <20240916085400.1046925-2-alex.bennee@linaro.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/about')
-rw-r--r--docs/about/deprecated.rst11
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index ed31d4b0b2..809b2b9b81 100644
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -184,6 +184,17 @@ be an effective use of its limited resources, and thus intends to discontinue
it. Since all recent x86 hardware from the past >10 years is capable of the
64-bit x86 extensions, a corresponding 64-bit OS should be used instead.
+TCG Plugin support not enabled by default on 32-bit hosts (since 9.2)
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+While it is still possible to enable TCG plugin support for 32-bit
+hosts there are a number of potential pitfalls when instrumenting
+64-bit guests. The plugin APIs typically pass most addresses as
+uint64_t but practices like encoding that address in a host pointer
+for passing as user-data will lose data. As most software analysis
+benefits from having plenty of host memory it seems reasonable to
+encourage users to use 64 bit builds of QEMU for analysis work
+whatever targets they are instrumenting.
System emulator CPUs
--------------------