On 28/8/25 18:27, Peter Maydell wrote:
We deprecated the command line option -old-param for the 10.0
release, which allows us to drop it in 10.2. This option was used to
boot Arm targets with a very old boot protocol using the
'param_struct' ABI. We only ever needed this on a handful of board
types which have all now been removed from QEMU.
Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <peter.mayd...@linaro.org>
---
docs/about/deprecated.rst | 13 ------
docs/about/removed-features.rst | 12 +++++
include/system/system.h | 1 -
hw/arm/boot.c | 81 +--------------------------------
system/globals.c | 1 -
system/vl.c | 4 --
qemu-options.hx | 7 ---
7 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 106 deletions(-)
diff --git a/docs/about/removed-features.rst b/docs/about/removed-features.rst
index d7c2113fc3e..b1b3d1b1b3f 100644
--- a/docs/about/removed-features.rst
+++ b/docs/about/removed-features.rst
@@ -560,6 +560,18 @@ the options along with the machine models they were
intended for.
Use ``-run-with user=..`` instead.
+``-old-param`` option for booting Arm kernels via param_struct (since 10.0)
s/since 10.0/removed in 10.2/
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+The ``-old-param`` command line option was specific to Arm targets:
+it was used when directly booting a guest kernel to pass it the
+command line and other information via the old ``param_struct`` ABI,
+rather than the newer ATAGS or DTB mechanisms. This option was only
+ever needed to support ancient kernels on some old board types
+like the ``akita`` or ``terrier``; it has been deprecated in the
+kernel since 2001. None of the board types QEMU supports need
+``param_struct`` support, so this option has been removed.
Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <phi...@linaro.org>
