Re: + stupid-hack-to-make-mainline-build.patch added to -mm tree

Jeremy Fitzhardinge
2007-03-08T01:23:42Z

Daniel Arai wrote:
> But more importantly, we want a kernel that can run both on native hardware and
> in a paravirtualized environment. Linux doesn't really provide abstractions for
> replacing the appropriate code. We tried to hook into the source code at a
> level that seemed possible.
>

Xen doesn't support any kind of apic emulation, so we'll need to hook
anything which relies on an apic. The ipi code you quote below will
probably be one of those.

My opinion is that pv_ops shouldn't have raw apic operations, but
instead have appropriate high-level interfaces to achieve the same
ends. Zach's counter-argument was basically your's: that the VMI code
will use a lot of the native code except for the actual apic operations.

I can live with VMI emulating apics if it wants, so long as it does it
in private and doesn't make a big scene about it. We'll need the
high-level interfaces regardless.

J