[Xen-devel] Re: [PATCH] xen: core dom0 support

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>]

* Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> Hm, how can the same code that you call "massive out-of-tree patches 
>> which doesn't make anyone happy" in an out of tree context suddenly 
>> become non-intrusive "minor amount of extra stuff" in an upstream 
>> context?
>>
>> I wish the upstream kernel was able to do such magic, but i'm afraid it 
>> is not.
>
> No, but I am ;) The current out of tree Xen patches are very 
> intrusive because there hasn't been much incentive to reduce 
> their impact.  I've going through it all and very carefully 
> rewriting it 1) be cleaner, 2) enable/disable itself at 
> runtime, 3) have clean interfaces and interactions with the 
> rest of the kernel, and 4) address any concerns that others 
> have.  In other words, make Xen a first-class kernel citizen.
>
> Most of the intrusive stuff has already been merged (and 
> merged for some time now), but without dom0 support its only 
> half done; as it stands people are using mainline Linux for 
> their domUs, but are still limited to patched up (old) kernels 
> for dom0.  This is a real problem because all the drivers for 
> interesting new devices are in the new kernels, so there's an 
> additional burden of backporting device support into old 
> kernels.

This means that the "massive out-of-tree patches which doesn't 
make anyone happy" argument above is really ... a hiperbole and 
should be replaced with: "small, unintrusive out-of-tree patch"?

        Ingo

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