Re: [Xen-users] When will xen-compatibilty be standard in Linux kernels?

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I thought I'd heard several months back that Xen compatibility patches
> > were going to be rolled into the mainstream linux kernel source trees, so
> > that in future Xen would be just another architecture one could select
> > under make config -- not requiring a special, patched kernel.
> >
> > But this doesn't seem to be the case yet.  Did I misunderstand what the
> > plans were, or is it just taking longer that I expected?  Does anybody
> > know the expected timeline for this?  In which kernel release can we
> > expect this?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Derek.
>
> I had heard back in the spring that a politacal bruhaha had erurpted
> as to whether to accept pure Xen patches vs. generic Hypervisor
> patches.
>
> IIRC, the generic set of patches were coming from VMware or maybe MS.
>
> Was it ever settled?

VMware produced the generic patches for their VMI interface.  The 
disagreements were at least partly technical regarding the approaches of the 
VMI and Xen patches - both had merits and problems.  Getting competing 
companies to co-operate is always interesting proposition, though, I think!

The dispute has seemingly been settled by a resolution to implement an 
interface called "paravirt_ops" which can either talk to VMI (VMware) or the 
Xen hypercall API.  paravirt_ops should eventually allow a single kernel 
build to run on one or more hypervisors in paravirtualised mode, and natively 
on hardware - with decent performance.

The plan was to push ahead with getting basic infrastructure for paravirt_ops 
merged pretty quickly.

The merge process for the Xen code has been pretty slow, but it is still 
planned to happen.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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