[Qemu-devel] Re: Live migration protocol, device features, ABIs and other beasts

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

Juan Quintela wrote:
>> The problem here isn't migration, it's what you've decided to backport
>> into your stable branch.
>>     
>
> No. the problem is that I made a mistake in the past.  And didn't add a
> field to the state that I should.  It just happens to work without that
> field in several use cases.  But in others, it fails spectacularly.
> What to do here?
>   

Blacklist the broken version of the format.  If it's known to fail under 
normal usage, that's the only right thing to do given the mechanisms we 
possess today.

>> And from an upstream position, I would oppose implementing the pvclock
>> change in the stable branch exactly because of the problems it would
>> create with live migration.
>>     
>
> Let's say that the problem is when half of the users told you that you
> can't change it in the stable branch, and the other half told you that
> without the change, migration don't work in a reliable way :(
>   

If one user needs one behavior and another user absolute needs a 
different behavior, you provide a mechanism for a user to choose which 
policy they want.

See my proposal about configurable device blacklists.

> It does'nt matter what you do, you lose :(
>   

If we stick strictly to providing mechanisms and default policies, we 
can't lose because we always pass the blame higher in the stack :-)

Regards,

Anthony Liguroi