Re: qemu bsd-user plans

["Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 12:41:30PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> The FreeBSD project has rewritten bsd-user. We've been working on this for
> quite some time (the earliest commits date from 2013). Maybe a dozen people
> have worked on this over time, and there's 3 or 4 active developers focused
> on FreeBSD changes at the moment.

The fact that you have 3-4 people involved in this work is will be very
helpful to you going forward with a QEMU maintenance.

The biggest problem with getting code merged into QEMU is an insufficient
number of reviewers for the amount of patches sent. Since we have a rule
that patches need a review from someone else who isn't the author, if there
are two people with expertize to review patches in a given QEMU subsystem,
then they can become self-sufficient and review each others patches on
qemu-devel, which then makes merging much more productive.

If anyone wants to be automatically CC'd on patches for bsd-user for the
purposes of acting as a designated reviewer, they can added to MAINTAINERS
file to, alongside the primary maintainer(s).


> So, my new plan is to rebase what changes I can to the tip of master and
> submit those for review. I'll work with the developers on the FreeBSD side
> to ensure they are included in reviews in addition to the normal qemu-devel
> list. This will allow us to pare down the deltas between our code and
> upstream to allow us to make progress. The changes will be held to the
> standard 'makes things better'. Given how broken bsd-user is today in qemu
> upstream, at first that will a very easy standard to make.
>
> The first patch I'll submit will be changing MAINTAINERS to point to me,
> since I'm acting as the point person in this effort. I'll then re-submit
> some other changes that I've submitted in the past, but CC the FreeBSD
> folks that are currently active (they were only CC'd to former developers
> who lack the time to review).

> But before I get too far down this path, I thought I'd send out what's
> going on to qemu-devel so I can get feedback and adjust the plan into
> something that's mutually agreeable so time I put towards this is not
> wasted.

No objections from me. Since current bsd-user is orphaned, largely
unusable, and you're volunteering your time to make it better, I'm
supportive of whatever you believe is the most time efficient way
to improve bsd-user.

I presume some of the current QEMU maintainers knowledgable about
linux-user will be able to review the patches, and as mentioned
above, if other BSD devs currently active in bsd-user work can
also provide reviews on qemu-devel that'll be useful long term.


Regards,
Daniel
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