Re: [RFC][PATCH]mini-os: big-endian mini-os on ia64

[Grzegorz Milos <gm281@cam.ac.uk>]

>> What I want to have is a mini-os, where everybody whith ia64 hardware can
>> build and run a BE mini-os beside LE mini-os (or other domU's) on xen-ia64
>> hypervisor. If you say at this point: no interrest for such a thing, than we
>> can stop this discussion here.
> 
> I don;t think we'd have a problem with incorportaing support for ia64-be if
> there's a good reason for it (a better reason than "because it's possible").
> 
>> The other way would be building wrappers around all the accesses to
>> domU/hypervisor interfaces and hide the SWAPs there. But this seems a little
>> bit overkill at this stage.
> 
> It would be less ugly and I think less prone to missing some open-coded
> accesses. Open-coding the SWAP()s is pretty grim.
> 

One solution to the rotting problem would be write regression tests. 
High level tests (like for example netfront test) would be quite good at 
picking missing SWAPs, since they exercise a fair amount of Xen/Dom0 
interfaces. Still it's quite hard to check the coverage (anybody happens 
to be an expert on coverage testing?).

I too dislike scattering SWAPs all over the code, but I guess having a 
nice set of wrappers would at least confine the problem. Still ... not 
that fond of it.

Cheers
Gregor