Re: First release of GPL PV drivers for Windows

[Andy Grover <andy@groveronline.com>]

James Harper wrote:
> This is the first release of my GPL'd PV drivers for Windows. Only block
> device drivers so far. Also only really useful to anyone who knows
> something about windows driver development.

Great to see this, James!

> My test environment is Xen 3.1.0 and Windows 2003 sp2. YMMV.
> 
> You can download the source zip file at
> http://www.meadowcourt.org/WindowsXenPV-0.0.1.zip. No binary release
> yet.

Yeah I'd think a binary release could wait until everything is stable.

> To build, you'll need the Windows WDF 6000 (not the later one which is
> Longhorn only I think) which you can get from Microsoft. It's not small.
> You'll also need the xen/common/public folder from the xen source tree,
> which needs to be in common/include/public in the Windows PV drivers
> source tree. I've been doing checked build's and using Dbgview from
> SysInternals for testing. Run 'build' from both the xenpci and xenvbd
> folders, then copy everything from target up to your test server.
> 
> I've probably omitted some vitally important step from the above, so
> please let me know if you need any assistance compiling.

I don't see a xen/common/public folder in the xen-3.1-testing hg tree.
Did you mean xen/include/public?

BTW I have remote debugging with WinDBG working, which really helps --
follow the directions here (and my comment at the bottom)
http://www.evilbitz.com/2006/12/13/howto-debugging-a-remote-windows-hvm-under-xen-using-windbg/

> The source code really needs a tidy up. The Windows DDK stuff has it's
> own coding style which I've imitated in places, and then xen has it's
> own too, so this code is mostly one, the other, both, or neither. I'll
> get to that as soon as I get the major bugs out.

Yeah I don't know if there is really a good solution to this...

I'd like to start submitting patches very soon (as soon as I get it
working :) so it would be very nice to have it under SCM somewhere as
part of a hg clone of xen-unstable? Or in xen-unstable itself. That
would resolve any include path issues, I think.

Also, now that there are alpha GPLed Win PV drivers, this is a good
chance for those who already have Win PV drivers they can't GPL
(XenSource, Virtual Iron and Novell, due to basing their versions on the
DDK sample code) to help out with improvements to this codebase.

Regards -- Andy