Re: Extending virtio_console to support multiple ports

Anthony Liguori
2009-08-31T15:56:27Z

Amit Shah wrote:
> On (Mon) Aug 31 2009 [09:21:13], Anthony Liguori wrote:
>
>> Amit Shah wrote:
>>
>>> Can you please explain your rationale for being so rigid about merging
>>> the two drivers?
>>>
>>>
>> Because they do the same thing. I'm not going to constantly rehash
>> this. It's been explained multiple times.
>>
>
> It hardly looks like the same thing each passing day.
>

That's BS. The very first time you posted, you received the same
feedback from both Paul and I. See
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/44778. That was back
in June. You've consistently received the same feedback both on the ML
and in private.

> We're ending up having to compromise on the performance or functionality
> or simplicity the devices just because of this restriction.
>

This is _not_ a high performance device and there so far has been no
functionality impact. I don't understand why you keep dragging your
feet about this. It's very simple, if you post a functional set of
patches for a converged virtio-console driver, we'll merge it. If you
keep arguing about having a separate virtio-serial driver, it's not
going to get merged. I don't know how to be more clear than this.

>> If there are implementation issues within the Linux drivers because of
>> peculiarities of hvc then hvc needs to be fixed. It has nothing to do
>> with the driver ABI which is what qemu cares about.
>>
>
> I'd welcome that effort as well. But we all know that's not going to
> happen anytime soon.
>

That is not a justification to add a new device in QEMU. If we add a
new device everytime we encounter a less than ideal interface within a
guest, we're going to end up having hundreds of devices.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori