Re: [Qemu-devel] GSoC mentor summit QEMU users session

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 11/02/2011 02:27 PM, Alexander Graf wrote:
> Peter Maydell wrote:
>> On 2 November 2011 18:47, Alexander Graf<agraf@suse.de>  wrote:
>>
>>> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>
>>>> We should also be able to establish an EXPORT_SYMBOL concept, ie. only
>>>> export those functions that are supposed to be part of a component API.
>>>> Will be some work initially, but should be off long term, both to QEMU
>>>> in maintaining stable APIs and to external components in using the
>>>> proper ones.
>>>>
>>
>>
>>> Yes. IOW, let's go down the same road as Linux. It works well for them,
>>> why not for us?
>>>
>>
>> I'd rather see us have a decent usable API for implementing devices
>> *inside* the QEMU source tree before we start thinking about having
>> one for devices outside the tree...
>>
> Right. That's exactly what Linux does. On Linux, you have EXPORT_SYMBOL
> and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. The former is considered reasonably stable. The
> latter can change even in minor revisions.

No... neither are stable.

The difference is historical and has to do with licensing, not stability.

> So the obvious thing to do would be to export everything, but mark it
> unstable and then mark things stable as we go in and actually consider
> them stable. And only consider them stable for a limited time.

For the record, I'm opposed to ever having a stable plugin API.

We aren't a closed source product.  If people want to have to keep up with our 
changing internal interfaces, they can get their code merged upstream.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Alex
>
>