Re: Xen & VMI?

Ingo Molnar
2007-03-06T17:18:43Z

* Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> wrote:

> > My suggestion would be for Linux to make only a /single/ external
> > ABI promise: VMI. (and we can extend it with higher-level paravirt
> > ops, etc.)
>
> "VMI" is not a promise, it's just three letters. It doesn't even mean
> the same thing now as it did 12 months ago. Turning "VMI" from three
> letters into anything remotely like a promise is a huge amount of work
> which requires:
>
> 1. someone actually sit down and fully document what all those
> entrypoints are going to do
> 2. everyone to implement them
> 3. someone to test that all the implementations conform to the
> document (bearing in mind that if anyone is going to go to all
> this effort, they're going to use this with non-Linux guests)
> 4. and repeat all that every subsequent update

There's no process needed. The only thing needed is to treat the Linux
implementation as the reference design, documentation and specification.
Treat it as we treat the Linux system calls. We promise not to change
them. There's no "process" for that either, other than our promise, our
taste and our best efforts - plus the backing of all distributions and
the threat of a few million users who start yelling (or worse) if we
break it ;)

Ingo