Re: [PATCH] CHANGELOG.md: Make PV shim smaller by factoring out HVM-specific shadow code

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Mar 31, 2021, at 3:06 PM, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On 31.03.2021 16:00, George Dunlap wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 31, 2021, at 2:54 PM, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 31.03.2021 15:52, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>>> George Dunlap writes ("Re: [PATCH] CHANGELOG.md: Make PV shim smaller by 
>>>> factoring out HVM-specific shadow code"):
>>>>> I don’t understand why the two of you are downplaying your work so much. 
>>>>> Yes, these are all only incremental improvements; but they are 
>>>>> improvements; and the cumulative effect of loads of incremental 
>>>>> improvements can be significant.  Communicating to people just what the 
>>>>> nature of all these incremental improvements are is important.
>>>> 
>>>> I agree with George here.
>>>> 
>>>> There ae a number of reasons why behind-the-scenes work with little
>>>> (intentional) user-visible impact are useful to note in the
>>>> CHANGELOG.md.  With my Release Manager hat on I would like to see, for
>>>> example,
>>>> 
>>>>>> + - Factored out HVM-specific shadow code, allowing PV shim to be slimmer
>>>> 
>>>> something about htis work in the CHANGELOG.md.
>>>> 
>>>> IDK precisely, and I don't think George does either, what a good and
>>>> accurate statement is.  But I guess we will go with the text above if
>>>> we don't get something better.
>>> 
>>> At the very least the part after the comma ought to be deleted. As
>>> said in an earlier reply, at least the shim default config disables
>>> shadow code anyway, so the factoring out has no effect there.
>> 
>> Thanks.  So when you wrote the series, what was your motivation?  Did you 
>> have a particular technical outcome in mind?  Or did it just bother you that 
>> there was HVM-only code in a PV-only build? :-)
> 
> What bothers me are more the implications - it being rather hard in
> many cases, and in particular in shadow code, to be able to tell what
> paths are involved in the handling of what kind(s) of guests. This
> has made more time consuming investigation of (suspected) misbehavior
> in more than one case.

OK, so how about:

- Factored out HVM-specific shadow code, improving code clarity and reducing 
the size of PV-only hypervisor builds

 -George