RE: [Xen-merge] xen-merge mailing list

["Nakajima, Jun" <jun.nakajima@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Wright wrote:
> * Ian Pratt (m+Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
>> Please excuse me from auto-subscribing you to this list, but I
>> figured it would be useful to have a list dedicated for discussion
>> about getting arch-xen prepared for sending upstream.
> 
> Thanks for setting that up Ian.
> 
>> It's pretty clear that we need to move fast on this, lest we get
>> stuck with the VMware VMI proposal that just doesn't do what we need
>> to get good performance.  I'd much rather get our patch in first and
>> add their hooks to our stuff, rather than being forced to work
>> within the framework of their very low-level approach.
> 
> I agree, it makes sense to get things in, and let later work go on
> with something concrete in place.
> 
>> So, how best to go about this? Can we parallelize the work? Where to
>> start?
> 
> I've started by simply creating an i386 sub-arch and moving bits over.
> (nowhere near compiling, just trying to get a handle on how much work
> there is and how it will split out).  I use this dumb script that
> basically diffs arch/xen/i386/* against arch/i386/*, for example,
> to generate the actual changes.  This could literally go file by file
> with an eye for basic cleanups.  We've had a few suggestions about the
> cleanups, such as ifdefs based on some config which essentially says
> physical machine, to effectively comment code out for Xen, or actual
> inlines and macros that are populated by the sub-arch.  Likely both
> are options depending on the specifics.  For example, x86_64 has
> method for alternative apic, I wonder if such a scheme might not be
> useful for i386 as well?

I'm not sure if there is a VMI patch against x86_64 at this point, but
I'm cleaning up the x86_64 code so that we can share the code with the
native Linux cleanly. At this point, I'm using #ifdef CONFIG_XEN as
agreed with Andi.

> 
> Also, Andi mentioned to me that he'd actually prefer to try and merge
> the x86_64 bits directly into the x86_64 port rather than add a
> sub-arch there if possible (Andi, please correct me if I
> misunderstood). 

In that case how do we switch the kernels headers for xenlinux? 

> 
>> Anyone interested in a trip to Cambridge to work on this stuff? It's
>> a nice time of year for a visit -- nice warm summer evenings sitting
>> in beer gardens...
> 
> Hmm, quite tempting.
> 
> thanks,
> -chris
> 

Jun
---
Intel Open Source Technology Center

_______________________________________________
Xen-merge mailing list
Xen-merge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-merge